There was a gap in my comics collecting. I can pinpoint it pretty accurately by my Animal Man collection. I know that the last issue of it I bought was around #14, in 1989. I picked up the hobby again around 1995, when I was living in London, Ontario. So I missed the Image explosion, and I definitely missed the X-titles that followed in its wake, when Marvel Comics was trying desperately to mimic the success of it's former employees.
Thank goodness.
There's a reason why comics from the early 90s are so mercilessly lampooned. They're really bad. And I'm saying this about a comic written by Fabian Nicieza, the man behind some of my favourite Thunderbolts stories, and by John Romita Jr., perhaps one of the most lauded of the Bronze Age/Modern Age comics artists. But, y'know, Cable. He was created, pretty much, by Rob Liefeld, and at this point in his history, he hasn't shed that image, so to speak. He still has giant puffy shoulders, and seems to spend his entire life grimacing over something painful, speaking in Frank Miller-esque bursts of exposition, and basically killing as many people and trying to sound like as much of a badass as possible.
It's hard for me to determine if this comic was good or bad, though. It's obviously picking up from New Mutants/X-Force storylines about which I have no knowledge. So in context, it might actually be a decent piece of superhero storytelling. Out of context, though, it suffers from the cliche of most X-books that one tries to read in a vacuum - it's so bogged down with continuity that the story just doesn't make sense. There's flashbacks, and references to apparently important characters. I half expected a Deadpool appearance, but maybe that's just a result of having spent time on the Internet in the last 2 months or so.
Bottom line, this is a Marvel X-comic from the early 90s. If you read them at the time, you have a nostalgic affection for them, but can't really convince me that they're any good. And if you didn't read them at the time, you probably avoid them like the plague. Like I would, though I don't have that option.
Okay, in an effort to end on a less negative note, Romita's art is always lovely to look at, even when I don't really know what's going on.
There. More tomorrow.
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