Comic Review: X-Men - X-Tinction Agenda

PUBLISHER: MARVEL (1990-1991)
WRITERS: CHRIS CLAREMONT, LOUISE SIMONSON
ARTISTS: JIM LEE, ROB LIEFIELD, JON BOGDANOVE

This is it, the progenitor, the prototype, the big daddy - the first real mutant crossover, the harbinger of "X-Cutioner's Song", "Fatal Attractions", "Age of Apocalypse" and "Onslaught". Marvel's mutant titles had done events before, starting with "Fall of the Mutants" in 1988 and "Inferno" the following year but for those each title had remained relatively self-contained. But 1990's "X-Tinction Agenda" featured a full flow of three issues of the three books with a constantly shifting cast; if you didn't buy all nine issues involved you would not have a clue what was happening and while each title would subtly focus ever so slightly on the home team it was only as part of an ongoing plot.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 7 - The Avengers #7-11

PUBLISHER: MARVEL
WRITERS: JEPH LOEB, ROB LIEFIELD, WALTER SIMONSON
ARTISTS: IAN CHURCHILL, MICHAEL RYAN

The midpoint of Heroes Reborn saw Rob Liefield effectively booted off the titles due to a combination of a difficulty in keeping deadlines, disappointing sales and vitriolic critical reaction. The Avengers and Captain America were instead transferred across to Wildstorm. There was still some overhang - Avengers #7 featured a Liefield cover and storyline and was pencilled by Ian Churchill; the artistic improvement was immense while the script continued on from the Industrial Revolution, featuring the Avengers moving into a mansion provided by Tony Stark, who has also joined the team as Iron Man (though no-one knows who's inside the armour). It ends with the arrival of the Lethal Legion, joined by the previously-missing Scarlet Witch.

This was only a temporary fill-in through and the remaining issues were penned by good ol' Walt Simonson. Y'know, good old Walt. Like Scott Lobdell, Walt's no visionary but he's a reliable pair of hands, always good for 22 pages of solid superhero capers. Which makes it all the more baffling that the result is a disaster, an absolute mess that's probably the worst segment of Heroes Reborn. Naturally a prominent thread for Thor and Loki is to the expected from Simonson; what actually happens is the Thor we've been reading about for seven issues is revealed to not be 'our' Thor, who appears within the reactor on the ruins of Avengers Island.

The previous Thor is revealed to be the 'real' Thor from this world rather than ours or something and quickly becomes a bad guy, battles our Thor and then finds redemption and neatly dies. Loki meanwhile bombards Avengers Mansion with a succession of bad guys (the Lethal Legion and the Masters of Evil) all orchestrated as some batty plan by Loki, who swallows up the plot threads previously in place with the Enchantress, Ultron and Kang. There's a general neatening as Ant-Man returns; despite the fact Hank had used his shrinking particles for the first time and promptly gone missing inside the Vision his wife Jan immediately takes some and becomes the Wasp just to make things nice and neat, Wanda's rapidly revealed to have been a witless dupe and Hellcat gets tricked by Loki and trapped in a mirror for not being central cast.

While Loeb & Liefield's stint was far, far from good at least it had a coherent central core plot; this second half of the title is just a mess, a disorientating stream of redesigned characters, nonsensical twists and schizophrenic characterisation. Michael Ryan's art is capable enough with some interesting takes on classic characters (though his rapid conversion of Hellcat to a more conventional Tigra-esque look is perhaps a shame) but with this script it's all for nothing. A complete bloody shambles.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 5 - Industrial Revolution

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITERS: JIM LEE, BRANDON CHOI, JEPH LOEB, SCOTT LOBDELL
ARTISTS: JIM LEE, ROB LIEFIELD, RYAN BENJAMIN

The sixth issue of each of the heroes reborn titles saw a crossover drawing all the characters together - although there had already been some overlap. So it's a bit of a damp squib anyway even before the scant content. The storyline tentatively starts in Fantastic Four #6 but really it concerns tidying up the whole Latveria Doctor Doom/Silver Surfer/Super Skrull storyline - including linking the four's powers to those of the surfer and the first glimpse of this universe's galactus. Then at the end they're alerted to a situation brewing at Avengers Island.  

 

There the gamma reactor used for whatever the avengers need power for that requires a gamma reactor being built under a superhero base is going critical in their tussle with the Hulk. The Four and Iron Man head in to help - requiring Hawkeye and the Swordsman to be invalided out of the plot. Everyone meets up, speaks platitudes to each other and then Bruce Banner sacrifices himself (or likely not) for the second time in seven issues trying to save the ever-imperiled Eastern seaboard from gamma meltdown. Avengers Island still gets wasted but without any other casualties, the reactor being saved even if the team's base in trashed. Apart from maybe Hellcat, who Lobdell loses track of, and the Scarlet Witch, who's involved in some posession subplot that doesn't seem to be going anywhere good. And there's no mention of Hank Pym or the Vision either. There is a fleeting hallucination of Onslaught in the island's reactor, however, the first real glimpse that how the Heroes got where they are might be a plot point.
 

That just about stretches to filling Avengers #6 and Iron Man #6, so there's still Captain America's contribution. Occe again the dynamic team of Loeb and Liefield manage to drop the standard because most of it is a random battle aboard the SHIELD helicarrier between AIM, Modok and Zemo on one side with Cap and Cable on the other. Yeah, Cable, Liefield's creation from the main Marvel Universe turning up somehow thanks to time travel magic to big Cap up for 18 pages of awful splash pages while Bucky inexplicably tells everyone she just had a piss. Cable's snapped away at the end, realising the Heroes are still alive and needs to find out where. Which is a nice plot avenue that doesn't really ring true as it's hard to imagine Cable giving much of a toss about Iron Man or the Human Torch. The dialogue and actual plotting meanwhile are so bad; it's just a random fight scene with Cap spouting catchphrases about stopping Nazis like he's in a first gen licensed tie-in game while Cable creams at how inspiring he is. Oh and in the last couple of pages someone reminds him it's part of the crossover and the Avengers and Iron Man materialise in Nick Fury's office to tell him Tony Stark will be taking over the team. In a splash page.
 

Not only could this huge plot point have taken up page space otherwise used establishing that Bucky needs to read a sign to remind her to wash her hands after a slash but it also reverts much of the setup to pre-Onslaught formatting, making the first arcs of three of the books totally pointless. An apt summary for a poor crossover even on charitable relative terms.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 4 - Captain America #1-5

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1996
WRITER: JEPH LOEB
ARTIST: ROB LIEFIELD

Captain America was without doubt the most controversial and outright worst of the Heroes Reborn titles. Before the relaunch Mark Waid had been doing great things with the book, possibly the best for decades at least, so getting Loeb and Liefield in was never going to go down well. It doesn't help that the initial arc basically covers every single Liefield cliche going.  Repeatedly. To the point that you're wondering if he's doing it on purpose and then remember he's Rob Liefield and he's not up to doing anything on purpose.

The first arc sets up the retconned Heroes Reborn origin for Captain America; his origins and WW2 service are unchanged but at the end of it he challenges President Truman over the use of the A-bomb and ends up getting brainwashed by S.H.I.E.L.D. to think he's just a normal guy. The rise of a neo-Nazi group and the efforts of old comrade Abe Wilson eventually lead to his memory being restored and he's back in action. On paper it's not too bad compared to being frozen in a block of ice unnoticed but it's not great either; the logistics involved are only paid lip service, as are the psychological ramifications.

But then the script is all about lip service. Thrown into this are this universe's introduction to Nick Fury, the new Bucky in the form of a girl named Rikki Barnes whose brother joins up with the neo-Nazis and who talks exactly like Boomer out of X-Force, the origin of the Falcon (still Sam Wilson, the son of the aforementioned Abe) and the neo-Nazi movement involving the Red Skull, Master Man (looking identical to Stryfe here) and Crossbones. One of the weird things about the Heroes Reborn universe was most of the heroes were those brought over from the scrap with Onslaught but their old enemies tended to crop up naturally on the counter-Earth, which was a bit weird. You can hand-wave it by just going "Franklin" like everything else but it makes it all a bit redundant.

In theory this should make for a packed five issues but everything's just rushed through. Conflicts are set up and then rapidly resolved - Cap's pissed at Nick Fury but that rapidly dissipates; Sam wants revenge on Cap for taking over his dad's life but only needs to see him fight once to become a total fanboy; Bucky gets rescued from a missile launch, kicks her brother and lands the job of sidekick; Cap gets over fifty years of his life being lies and goes into combat within a few hours.

This idiotic pace isn't helped by the gigantic amount of splash pages Liefield and Loeb use; typically they just feature Cap posing with a few scant narration boxes scattered around. There are probably five issues of plot in the storyline but it's meted out like punctuation, a frame packed with some underwhelming conflict after ten of Cap standing there.

And while everything else is bad the whole thing is made worse by the art. It's a tired and easy thing to list Liefield's faults but it's inescapable as well. Dodgy anatomy (the small head mounted on a neck that looks like it's wearing a ruff of muscles gets a real workout here), outdated fashions (everyone has wavy eighties hair; Sharon Carter especially looks like she should be draped over a Lamborghini Countach in a Pirelli calendar), a total lack of dynamics (hands out to the side = running, the only kick is a double drop kick), simplistic backgrounds (single blocks of colour, obviously sourced clipart of the US flag) and a range of about two facial expressions - generally mouth open or mouth closed.

All in all it's an absolute shambles even on relative terms.

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Comic Review - Heroes Return Part 2: The Avengers #1-5

Alongside Jim Lee's Wildstorm the other Image studio to land work on Heroes Reborn was Rob Liefield's Awesome studios, who handled The Avengers and Captain America. Before the reboot The Avengers wasn't actually in particularly rude health, due to Marvel's habit for much of the nineties of spreading the big names out among their solo books more, leaving the title with a weak roster and the big guns featuring almost as guest stars. This was partly rectified in the closing issues as much to bring the characters intended to 'die' in the Onslaught event together but the last thirty of forty issues of the first volume are basically no-one's favourite run of Avengers issues.

As such the Heroes Reborn title had the advantage of unfettered access to the mainstays of the team. Liefield and Loeb came up with an interesting set-up, with the team being a SHIELD-controlled unit based on an island off Manhattan - more than a little like the later much better regarded Ultimates, which just goes to show how easy it is to make a mess of a decent concept. Captain America is head of the team, something which ties into his solo title (the events of this book taking place later than those in that book); joining him on the field roster are the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, the Swordsman and Hellcat. Hank Pym meanwhile is tech support, having built the Vision and working on Ultron on the island, with wife Jan also  non-combat personnel. Thor meanwhile is found frozen in ice in the first issue (a clear flip of Cap's Silver Age introduction) while within a couple of issues Pym experiments with being Ant-Man. Iron Man is kept separate for the time being in his own title, thankfully.

It's not a roster without promise, notably the addition of the Swordsman and Hellcat - and not just as cannon fodder, though sadly they have Peak Liefield redesigns; the Swordsman has a weird bowl-cut that stops just north of his ears, a vaguely Japanese outfit and is incapable of going anywhere without 27 swords strapped to his back because obviously if you're the world's best swordsman you're going to lose swords left, right and centre and need to carry loads of spares; Hellcat on the other hand is just Feral from X-Force, all weird vertical hair and Swimsuit Illustrated poses with the underscoring feeling that Rob actually thinks the result is pretty damn hot. Sadly under Loeb & Liefield any potential is fumbled to a few broad character strokes - Cap is deeply distrustful of SHIELD; the Vision is struggling to learn about humanity like Data off Star Trek; Hawkeye is a Rebel Who Doesn't Like Orders; the Swordsman is a preening poser who is secretly unsure of what he contributes, the Scarlet Witch is inexperienced and falls in love with basically everyone male, Thor awakens with the morals of an actual Norse God. 

Some of these character sketches have potential but they're dropped into a crazy helter-skelter of a plot as Loki, the Enchantress, the Hulk and Kang are all thrown into the first five issues (The Avengers did double-time in the Industrial Revolution crossover) along with the brewing Ultron and Agatha Harkness. Unlike Loeb & Liefield's Captain America this does mean it has a bit of pace but it's too badly done to match the Fantastic Four's amiable Silver Age energy. There are still far too many splash pages and there's a weird dissonance in that the Avengers seem to be simultaneously a new and unproven team and well-known enough to attract media coverage and a key role in SHIELD. The team's relationships between each other are the same, the title acting like they've just met sometimes and have a full rundown on each other at other times. All of this is bad enough and then you've got Liefield's art, which isn't his worse but is still comfortably dreadful nonetheless.

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