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| Saturday, April 21, 2007 12:16 PM |
| Grant Morrison, God of X-Men |
 by Fëanor |
The New X-Men, Volumes 1 & 2 - I'm not always the biggest fan of Grant Morrison. I didn't particularly like Arkham Asylum. I kind of liked The Invivisbles, but mostly it left me puzzled (although EverMike has lent me volume 1 and I'm going to try reading it again). That being said, I have very few complaints about his work here with the X-Men, which started around the time that the first of the live action X-Men movies was coming out. The concept here was that Grant Morrison was going to take the X-Men and make them cool again. His pitch is included in the first volume, and it makes for some interesting reading. His idea was that the X-Men had become lame and boring and out of touch with what was cool and interesting about comics. He said the latest issues sucked, that he hadn't even read them all, and it was time for a big change, and he could provide that change. Sounds a bit arrogant and ballsy, but he pulls it off with flying colors and delivers what are easily the two best collections of X-Men comics I've ever read.
As the introduction to volume 1 states, what Morrison ends up doing is essentially taking all the classic X-Men characters and tropes (the Cyclops and Jean Grey romance, the Phoenix storyline, the Professor X and Lilandra relationship, the Sentinels, the uneasy and often violent relationship between mutants and non-mutants, the conflict between human-friendly mutants and non-human-friendly mutants), jumbling them up, remixing them, and giving them a completely fresh, exciting, and dangerous feel. These books are disturbing, entrancing, involving, funny, dark, violent, intelligent, complex, and absolutely fantastic.
The characters as we know and love them are here intact: Cyclops is the straight man, stuck up and repressed. Jean is the strong woman who may be a little too strong. Wolverine is a bloodthirsty killing machine with just enough morals to keep him on the right side of things. Professor X is the powerful genius trying to lead the mutants to peace, but unsure if his methods are really working. Beast is the hilarious, sarcastic intellectual, who just may be a bit gay. The White Queen, Emma Frost, becomes one of the "good guys," but uneasily; she's naughty, bitter, hilariously sarcastic, and brutally amoral.
And Morrison also tosses in a bunch of his own new characters that are just as lovable and amazing. The White Queen's gang of identical psychic blond girls, who call themselves the Midwich Cuckoos after the creepy children in the novel of the same name (and the film Village of the Damned), are just brilliant. Morrison also has the guts to point out that not all mutants are going to have good or useful mutations; he introduces us to characters like Ugly John, a mutant with three faces that all look like pigs... and that's it. That's his "power." There's also the Beak, an ugly chicken boy who can't even glide gracefully, let alone fly.
And the storylines themselves are insanely epic and breathlessly fast paced, full of incredible action and brutal violence. Titanic and often deeply disturbing things are happening on every page. My only criticism would be that sometimes the thing is almost too fast paced, and feels like it's skipping over important details, or just not pacing itself very well. Other than that, both of these books are just pure unadulterated genius, and I desperately need to find volume three.
UPDATE: I forgot to metion that Morrison also comes up with other great concepts like The U-Men, a religious cult made up of regular old non-mutant humans who want their own mutations - and are willing to kill and harvest the organs of real mutants in order to get them. Oh, and as for other flaws, I was also a little disappointed when [SPOILER AHEAD!] he killed off Magneto off-screen. I mean, okay, you're mixing things up, changing things around, I understand killing off some major characters. But killing one that's that excellent, and that major, and while we're not even looking?! That seems kind of underhanded. Of course, he'll probably end up getting resurrected somehow anyway, so it's not that big a deal, but still. |
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