The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2037: Generation X #19, September 1996

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I find it appropriate that I return to blogging (after a fucking month!) with a series of which I'm quite overly fond. I loved The New Mutants, and Generation X was a fantastic follow-up to the tales of young mutants that I grew up with. While the whole mutant metaphor is very useful for telling stories about marginalized groups, the onset of mutation, in puberty, also makes it a perfect vehicle for telling stories about growing up.

 So, a month off, and my wrists and thumbs are slightly better, but not much. The job I'm doing now is not super great for my pain, but it's a worthwhile endeavour, and I've had so many people tell me how appreciative they are for my efforts. Who knew that delivering groceries would be so fulfilling?

 That said, we're well into the Onslaught crossover here. I don't have all of the parts, but I figured I had enough to finally sit down and read a good, multi-title event. I think I probably got most of the parts of this crossover from my initial purchase of a comic collection from Cover to Cover Books when I was in the process of opening up my comic store. I started getting back into comics around the time that this crossover was happening, but I was much more into DC at the time.

The crossover itself is pretty great, and though there were subsequent problems, the Image-led reboots of The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Captain America were not terrible. Once Liefeld left, anyway. My Marvel re-introduction actually came from one of the series that spins out of this crossover, the amazing, fantastic Thunderbolts. I'll say a bit more about the actual Onslaught event tomorrow.

I love Generation X, particularly this initial Scott Lobdell/Chris Bachalo run. Mr. Bachalo's sense of panel layout and composition is just amazing. He and Mr. Lobdell seem unafraid to be very explicit about the materiality of their medium, breaking the fourth wall constantly and placing a sometimes Greek Chorus-level of exposition and commentary outside of the action of the comic. It's hard to describe, but today's comic is introduced by a talking toad whom we follow from event to event through the comic. Have I mentioned at all that this is actually a very strange comic, quite unlike the rest of the X-titles from the same era? Probably why I like it so much.

So, I'm back, hopefully. We'll see if I can keep it up.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

A few more pieces on Chris Bachalo.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 704: The Tenth v.2 #1, February 1999

Ummm....soo....I got nothing. A bunch of things happened in this comic, but I didn't really get what most of them were. There was a robot woman called Adrenalynn. And a zombie king who looked a bit like the Gunmen from Gurran Lagann. And a talk show. And a guy with a giant stomach that hit people with it until he was blown up by what looked like a pretty standard handgun.

But Tony Daniel's art is lovely, so that's a plus.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 203: Generation Next #4, June 1995

So we finally reach the end of the story that started off the Age of Apocalypse proper (after all that prefatory matter, I mean). Generation Next is a creepy comic. The villains in it are truly repulsive and, what's more, so are some of the heroes. This series does a spectacular job of making Kitty Pryde and Colossus two of the most unlikable characters in the X-universe, AoA-style. The main title from which this series derives has a similar sort of feeling to it, but nothing quite as nihilistically bleak as what happens in this series.

As we know, the next generation of X-Men have been tasked with rescuing the time-travel capable Illyana Rasputin. What this comic suggests is that this next generation will also face a next generation of villainous mutants. In the beginning, characters like Toad and The Blob were pretty repulsive, or meant to be. So as the newer mutants become more and more edgy, for lack of a better term (think Chamber's blown-apart chest, or Husk's ripping off of her flesh), so too will their enemies evolve with them. It's like that suggestion the Joker makes in Nolan's The Dark Knight. One's villains and oneself are not always so far apart.

But let's get back to the Kitty and Piotr thing. I've suggested in earlier posts that there are certain characters whose representations are moving iconically through the different iterations of the universe. Cyclops is the one who springs to mind, his heroism, his seemingly unerring sense of right versus wrong. Do Shadowcat and Colossus have that? Something that does carry through in the characters and, aside from their powers, really the only recognizable thing about them, is their love. They love each other. You can see it. That's not to say that they seem to like each other very much. But they love each other. So while I was, in some places, disgusted with Colossus' behaviour, I could see shades of the individual he could be in the "proper" universe.

I will miss reading the Lobdell/Bachalo corner of the X-universe, AoA or no. As I noted earlier, it's really like this little chunk of the X-Men franchise broke away and fell in with those Vertigo ne'erdowells and brought a little bit of that charm back to the House of Ideas. I'll get to the Generation X series eventually, but perhaps not for some time.

We'll move on to another pre-Finale finale tomorrow with X-Calibre #4. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 189: Generation Next #3, May 1995

I've spent a lot of time in my Generation Next reviews heaping praise upon Chris Bachalo (and this issue is no exception. He's brilliant), and not looking too closely at the scripting and dialoguing of the comic. I find this to be one of the difficulties of writing critically about comics, especially those that are composed by two or more creators. There seems (or maybe it's just me) to be a propensity for focussing on one creator, often the one deemed the most talented. Which, I suppose, is fair in some ways. Today, though, I want to mention Scott Lobdell.

Lobdell has had a tough time in comics writing. His era of the X-Men is categorized as hyperbolic in the extreme, a symptom of having to try to keep up with the over the top antics of the Image Comics creators. I think I can safely say that I've only passably enjoyed most of the comics of his that I've read. He's got a decent grasp of superheroics, of dialogue and of plot, but, really, it's all pretty mediocre.

Except for Generation X.

I've run into this problem before. After finishing James Robinson's utterly, utterly brilliant Starman, I decided I should read anything else he's written. And, sadly, for the most part it was mediocre. We've even discussed this in the comics class I took last year, considering Art Spiegelman. Maus was a big hit for him, but has anything else that he's written come even remotely close to being as good? No. I think Lobdell falls into this categoy. His work, with Chris Bachalo, is a confluence of perfect conditions to create one of the most original titles in the X-stable. As I've noted with Bachalo, it's like looking at the X-Men through a Vertigo lens. Lobdell's scripts take all of the best elements of the wonderful early New Mutants stuff (and, actually, the art owes a lot to Bill Sienkiewicz's amazing run on that title), updates it for the nineties, and then heads off full tilt into amazing-ness. How's that for hyperbolic? I'm looking forward to getting to the regular Generation X comic at some point in the future. When I discovered it, around the time that the reigns were briefly passed over to Warren Ellis, it was the first time I'd actively pursued an X-title in almost 2 decades. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the art. Like all ongoing series, it goes through its down phases, but all of the writers on the title managed to maintain the integrity of the characters, if not the plot, which kept me interested. It's a shame the "Counter-X" stuff at the end didn't get a chance to flourish. It might have been great.

But that's getting ahead of myself. This brief foray into the Age of Apocalypse also highlights a character who gets very little play in the main title: Mondo. I'm not really sure what happened with him in Generation X. He gets introduced and then, seemingly, forgotten. At least, that's how I remember it. In Generation Next, however, he's fundamental to the rescue plan and, in this issue, is the one who ultimately carries it off. His role in the regular title is tangential, and I think he's ultimately taken over by a villain and killed. Again, this seems to be bringing some Vertigo sensibility to the X-universe. In a lot of ways the early Gen X is a precursor to the direction the Marvel Knights imprint would eventually take. Perhaps it just happened too early to be successful in that endeavour.

Continuing on on the morrow! See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 168: Tales of the Age of Apocalypse, December 1996

Another piece of the history of the AoA, courtesy of Scott Lobdell, Ralph Macchio, and Joe Bennett. This special was published well after the crossover itself had finished, and it smacks, as does tomorrow's comic, of B-list stories that were deemed not necessary for the crossover proper. That, by no means, means that it's a bad story, just that it was one that was not intrinsic to the fabric of the AoA adventure. Again, though, approaching it from the historical perspective that I've endeavoured to use for the last few comics, it is quite good. This one deals with what becomes of The Inhumans in the AoA, with Maximus standing in, albeit temporarily, as Death, the fourth horseman, though his plans to overthrow Apocalypse are stymied by the X-Men and Cyclops.

(On a reading order note, this comic appears to take place before yesterday's X-Men Chronicles #2, as Gambit is still a part of the team. I'll reshuffle it to take that into account for the next read through!)

The relationships between Sabretooth and Blink, Sabretooth and Morph, and Morph and Blink are explored in some depth in this comic, making it a nice look at some relationships that are simply not present in the regular continuity. Sabretooth's character in particular is given some much-needed fleshing out throughout this crossover, though I'll be interested to see what becomes of him when things return to "normal." That we're not seeing him as a regular protagonist in any current X-titles is a sign of how things go for him, I suppose.

Historical novelty aside, however, not much happens in this story that can possibly impact the main storyline. This is of course because the story is over, so what else can happen. The only really interesting inflection this story adds to the AoA crossover is the uncertainty of Prelate Summers about his role in Apocalypse's empire. Having read this comic first, I'll be looking at Factor X in a different light, I think. More history tomorrow! See you then.