#I don’t think I’ll /ever/ be over how Marvel editorial was so desperate for an out of the Clone Saga debacle that they basically | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dornishsphinx · 5 years

Note

T, U, and Y!

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Hmmm hard and fast headcanons that I’d die defending

From SOV, Conrad’s mother was a lady-in-waiting and close friend to Berkut’s mother who came with her to the capital when she married into the royal family. Lima was invited to the capital during the famine because the Rigelians were desperate. He saw her there and demanded she come with him in exchange for aid. (I may also be writing a fic on Conrad’s mother, watch this space ^_^)

Wrt Tellius, the United Bird Tribes eventually fall apart, the specific breaking point coming about due to arguments about over succession. The ravens end up putting forward Naesala and Leanne’s raven son and the hawk population are adamant that he not be considered (some going as far as to say that ravens in general shouldn’t be considered) due to lingering anger, the ravens getting angry in turn and moving to once again declare the independence of Kilvas (and taking a bit more territory with them this time since they’re in a stronger position.)

When it comes to Naesala and Leanne’s kids, the heron girl mostly takes after Naesala in personality, though the raven boy is more similar to Reyson than either of his parents (both also have traits from Leanne, but they’re less noticeable on first impression.) Both can sing galdr due to their mother but, especially for the raven boy, its effects are far weaker. (Maybe let’s say in gameplay terms that raven boy can buff and not actually refresh.)

Their heron daughter on one occasion also accompanies Naesala on a diplomatic mission to Begnion, where she decides to learn beorc magic—with Sanaki’s blessing and occasional direct tutelage—as a way to bypass herons’ inability to fight the laguz way, even staying there for a while when he leaves for his next destination. This is a major scandal in the laguz world.

U: Three favourite characters from three different fandoms and why they’re your favourites.

Oh man, it took me a while to settle on who to talk about, but:

Jason Todd (DC Comics)

Jason is the reason I got into DC generally, so I was already biased, but Jason is interesting because he’s a counterpoint to the idea that Batman knows Gotham City better than anyone, as someone who actively grew up on its streets rather than in the safety of a mansion, and someone who came to a vastly different conclusion on what had to be done to make it safer without being painted (mostly) as a clear-cut villain. Also, he’s a literary nerd and it’s such a cute little detail which is never really brought up explicitly on page but is a recurring thing in the background. The antique book collection in UTRH, reading Pride and Prejudice while in jail, really liking school as Robin, and in other bits I can’t remember the context of.

Where he gets fascinating is on a meta level though. We have the juxtaposition between what modern writers want Jason’s Robin to have been (I really love his run as Robin too, he’s such a cutie in comparison to what he becomes later) and how he actually was written, which kinda comes off as the characters themselves trying to convince themselves of something that isn’t true. And I’ve seen complaints about how people treat his death as being so much more important than others’ deaths when he’d hardly the only DC character to die, but it’s precisely because of real-world circumstances that it’s such a big deal–killed off by poll, left untouched for decades, his costume an ever-present ghost in the Batcave and for the Batfamily–it’s one of those things that can only happen in a big shared comicsverse medium.

I’ll never forgive the New 52 for being the reason we never saw, and can never see now, the Batfamily and Red Hood’s relationship develop.

He just became an ally again randomly in a way that screams editorial mandating “make them get along now, we don’t care how.” They just made everyone do a 180 without bothering to explain why or how and I hate it.

(Also, imo, grey morality Red Hood>outright villain Red Hood AND outright hero Red Hood.)

Laurent (Captive Prince)

Man, I know Captive Prince is controversial, but the story is just so good and even though it’s been a while since I read them, Laurent as a character has stuck with me. (I mean, I adore Damen too, but so many of the character concepts

I’ve come up with since reading the books have been Machiavellian princes shutting themselves off from their emotions, I’m pretty sure Laurent is the source.)

He’s had to adapt to survive the personal hell his uncle transformed the Veretian court into when he (and Damen) got the rest of their family killed—and, at the same time, anyone with the power or desire to protect Laurent from him—when he was just a little kid, and has just built up all the walls around himself. Seeing them slowly peel back and reveal the other sides to him he’s been forced to keep hidden for so long is one of the great things about the series. He’s such a well-realised character, and as you read along, you get to the point where you just need to see him succeed in taking Vere back from his uncle.

He always has the best comebacks too. Nearly everything he says when he’s not awkwardly trying to work his way around emotions he can’t properly express, usually when around Damen, is just pitch-perfect sarcasm even in dire circumstances.

Just a great character overall.

Franziska von Karma (Ace Attorney)

Last time I talked about a favourite Ace Attorney character it ended up being Ema, but I did say she only just beat out Franziska, so it’s her turn now. I’m so sad she’s not reappeared in any of the main games since the original trilogy, though at least we have Investigations. She still has to give Phoenix that card back!

But yes, I just love Franziska. She is very much part of the running theme of legacy families in Ace Attorney with her need to attain perfection and measure up to the Von Karma name, and her relationship with Edgeworth is sweet in a super competitive way. When she comes back later and spends the night trying to solve the puzzle locks to save Maya, you can also see that she has gone through a lot of development over the course of JFA and T&T.

(I maintain that 6-5 would have been vastly improved if she’d taken Edgeworth’s place, and am not entirely convinced it wasn’t originally written with her in mind. I mean, last time she appeared she was undergoing character development and trying to save Maya in a spirit medium-related setting, and this time had Maya being in a perilous situation in a spirit medium-related setting in a foreign country AND she has a history of working with Interpol. It would have actually made sense for her to show up as opposed to the Chief Prosecutor of a foreign country.)

(Also her design is amazing)

(Foolish fool)

Y: What are your second-hand fandoms (i.e. fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Dragon Age is the big one I can think of. I played a little of Dragon Age Origins before Redcliffe became a never-ending zombie nightmare and I wasn’t able to progress, so I don’t count myself as having really played, but I pretty much know all the spoilers. And have even plotted out who I’m gonna romance when I finally do get around to it. Current plan: Alistair (while pouring one out for the F/F romance with Morrigan that could never be), Fenris and Josephine.

Also Marvel, kinda? I don’t really buy or keep up with Marvel comics anymore aside from going to see the movies. I’ll check it out, but usually it’s only on a whim. (If Agent of Asgard/JiM Loki ever get a run again, you can count on me jumping back in.)

#haha i didn't realise how long the jason bit got oops #my biases are clear #asks

3 notes · View notes

whydidireadthis · 6 years

Text

All-New X-Factor

In 2014, Marvel embarked on the All-New initiative, perhaps reasoning that novelty would bring and keep readers. There was, at least in some cases, an attempt to go back to the high-flying adventure at the heart of the superhero genre, with less of the soap opera angst and sophomoric antics that seemed to drag comics down more every year.

As usual in superhero comics, they looked for a name. This time, they got Peter David, who had done X-Factor work before and, in my reading experience, did a good job making his first run on the title compelling...at least, until editorial started interfering and promptly ruined it.

Peter David and the Fan Favorites

I’ll say this and get it out of the way: I don’t like Peter David that much, personally. He’s at least as much of an asshole as I am, and he’s a real internet troll, as well as petty. But I’ll also say this: pretty much 90% of all well-known popular figures in superhero comics are some brand of either “crazy” or “asshole” if they’re not just plain stupid. David is extremely overrated for having written Young Justice throughout its run, despite it not being all that good and nobody apparently being willing to read it again without nostalgia goggles glued to them.

But at least he’s not any one of the seemingly endless hordes of names overrated for outright garbage. He does decent work, even if most of the time I don’t find it that exceptional, and doesn’t seem to need a strong editorial influence to keep his work tolerable. His sense of humor can bring a quality of realism and believability to the characters and situations, which is a really good thing. Often, it’s the lack of any humor at all that makes stories seem artificial and stilted.

All-New X-Factor assembles a team of characters that are basically all “fan favorites”, often underrated or relegated to the background in larger casts, and introduces a couple of new characters as well. The team lineup is a solid one that really showed a lot of potential. And I’ll admit, starting at the next-to-last issue and then jumping back to the beginning to read through, that was potential that never really came to any fruition, which is a huge shame.

The thing is, when David joined up with the original run of X-Factor, way back in volume 1 issue #71, he also stayed for 20 issues. And similarly then as now, the stories he told were derailed by the scourge of everything: “events”.

These “events” continue to plague the superhero universes, with meaningless crossovers that accomplish nothing. Storylines are built up in individual titles, then events come along and force those storylines to stand still while the event introduces new ones...and then after the event, it’s forgotten along with everything started during it, and also everything before it. So the title inevitably is cancelled, or the creative team swapped out, because it can’t recover from the ground level it’s essentially been reduced to. It is, in a word, Sisyphean.

And that’s basically what happens here. The Axis event dominates more of the run than any single storyline, and it’s a crossover. And not a particularly good one. What is really the worst about it, though, is the fact that even though the most pressing problems are solved on-panel, much of the resolution of the story takes place between issues and is just obliquely referred to in the next issue.

This is really not an okay way to do things, unless you’re doing a flashback to deal with it for some reason. Remember, “show, don’t tell” is usually a good rule of thumb, especially with comics.

It kind of exemplifies this run, though. Nothing really amounts to anything or leads anywhere. All-New X-Factor is basically one huge plot cul-de-sac, consisting of characters that were treated like shit in previous writing, trading references to some of that bad treatment and commiserating. In that, it usually gets its best moments. That’s essentially what you can take out of it: moments, with incidental connecting plots that don’t really add up to much. You think things are going to go somewhere, but they basically stay where they are.

And it’s fine, setting and sticking to a status quo is fine, but it is also unfortunately paired with a seeming lack of exceptional quality to the writing and characterization. It’s remarkable that Peter David, who most famously wrote that twenty issues of the original X-Factor, shaking up the by-then-stale series and reacquainting us with newly-relevant characters, seems to have forgotten who these characters are, and has no real idea who the others are that he’s saddled with.

At least in his original run, he had things happen that were appreciable, like Polaris breaking her jaw and having to recover from that. There’s nothing to really work with in All-New X-Factor, because the overwhelming impression is that David doesn’t really understand most of the characters and doesn’t want to take any risks with them. Which I applaud, don’t get me wrong -- I’d rather see someone who doesn’t get the characters be more cautious, instead of throwing it to the wind and totally ruining them. But David, in most of his more ambitious turns in the title, ends up forcing some of the characters into situations that don’t really suit them and do them no favors as people.

The Team Lineup

I always thought trying to claim Polaris was related to Magneto...was stupid. It’s facile and obvious, and it does nothing to develop the character at all. But for a while, Marvel were bound and determined to not only tear down any sympathy for Magneto, but also seemingly wanted to find some replacement. Ideally with boobs, similar to their desperate need to make X-23 a thing. So not only is Polaris dealing with her adult half-siblings (which, I will tell you, is not at all how that works in real life), she’s also conveniently comic-book crazy. Meaning that she sometimes goes a little violence-happy and has to be talked down, but only when the story needs her to do so.

It amounts to basically nothing and vanishes pretty quickly. She’s supposedly the leader of the team, but functionally there really isn’t a leader. It’s more like she organizes them sometimes, and occasionally she has some advice on how to do things. She is mostly easy enough to like, and the good thing about having a character who’s been so chaotically inconsistent is that any coherent personality is an improvement. Lorna is basically the same Lorna, personality-wise, that she was in David’s first run, with a weird personality tic.

Quicksilver is basically how he’s always been: a less obviously gay, and significantly less interesting, Northstar. And yes, I know Jean-Paul was created later. It doesn’t matter; that’s how people always tend to write the both of them. Pietro’s entire character in All-New X-Factor is “mildly clashing with Gambit”. That’s it.

Doug, also known as Cypher, gets the most character-building, which is nice since Abnett and Lanning’s fairly crap tie-up for their run on the New Mutants series didn’t leave him much to work with. Of all the characters involved in the title, Doug benefits most from it and actually gets the most to do. It isn’t always good, but at least it’s not essentially rehashing old plots from the first run of New Mutants that were done far better then. It is pretty puzzling that the character still has yet to resolve significant issues with various other characters who were extremely prominent in his life before dying and coming back to life, and I just have to chalk it up to yet another missed opportunity with the potential of All-New X-Factor.

Gambit is one of my favorites, but he’s almost always written badly. Either he ends up a shitty caricature even of the outrageously exhausted trope he came from, or he’s a misremembering of the 90s X-Men cartoon, or he’s just a completely different person than he’s ever been.

Here, Remy is sort of okay, most of the time, but he does some stupid things that aren’t really suited to him, like his lame and uncharacteristic pick-up artist turn in one issue that literally never manifests again at all in the entire series. Not that he isn’t a flirt, but this was phoning it in where it counts, and really disturbing where it didn’t.

He constantly seems toned down from his usual wit and cheer, to the point where he feels almost nihilistic and embittered. There’s little distinctive about his speaking patterns, too, which makes it seem strange when compared to a character like Rogue, whom I am bringing up not because of their extremely unhealthy, often ignorantly-celebrated and stupidly-promoted past relationship, but because she speaks like she just fell off the turnip truck and Gambit barely shows any signs in accent or in syntax of being from the deep Louisiana bayou.

There’s also an on-again, off-again narration from him...at least, that’s what I managed to figure out, because it’s not really made clear and seems extremely questionable at several points. It only appears in a handful of issues, and it never adds anything to the story. It’s almost ironic, really, because if Remy’s focused on as a narrator, you’d think he’d get more of a personal examination and development.

Nope! He gets one issue that really doesn’t focus on him at all.

Danger is a character I’ve always thought was idiotic, but she ends up kind of amusing, mainly for occupying the “fish out of water” role in the group and because of other people’s reactions to her. She’s still a pretty stupid character, and her introduction in the series does her no favors, but she is one of the few to show any real development over the course of the series. Essentially though, she’s one of the series’ deus ex machina characters, because none of the stories really seem to be committed to any sort of resolution. It’s almost ironic, since the team is filled with extremely powerful, highly capable characters, but only a couple ever distinguish themselves in resolving a problem.

Harrison Snow, the head of Serval Industries, basically occupies the other deus ex machina slot in the title. He’s not interesting or likeable, or sympathetic or compelling in any way, and what little development he’s given -- which links him to the godawful 2099 stuff -- is too late and not anything anyone cares about.

Seriously, stop trying to make 2099 happen.

At Least They’re Committed

Remember how I said there was a lack of commitment? It’s the same with the tone of the whole series. There’s no real reason they should be affiliated with this corporation, but they are for some reason anyway. There’s opportunity for scathing satire of the corporate world, but it never really shows up, outside of a couple of throwaway lines. X-Factor being, for some reason, a corporate-sponsored team never factors into the series all that much.

And it starts to get frustrating after a while, especially given that David’s original run actually committed to something. At that time, X-Factor had become a government-sponsored team, and examining the relationship between the US government and the rest of the Marvel Universe was a pretty large part of the team’s arc. Here, the only compare and contrast we get is to the Avengers, which barely factor into anything.

That brings me to Alex, Havok, who is in the series for the first few issues and then vanishes, never to return. He’s now a member of the Avengers (and if you don’t know why, you’re one step ahead of the writers; AvX was the absolute bottom of the barrel, even for an “event”) and decided to get Pietro to join the team in order to keep him informed on Polaris. I wish I could say this went anywhere, or played with any development to make it seem creepy, or sad, or just plain obnoxious, but it doesn’t. Alex is written like Scott, when Scott’s written his worst: a bland yuppie who reminds you of that person you know’s forgettably boring dad.

Alex and Lorna had a long-running relationship that ended at one point and never really rekindled, and that was even further sidetracked by Marvel’s insistent retcons of Magneto and his family, with further ruin thanks to -- let’s all say it together now! -- events. Here, David could have introduced a tension between Alex and Lorna again and had the two advance...but they never really address it or even really talk directly. And when Alex is done with eavesdropping, Pietro decides not to return to the Avengers, and Alex disappears from All-New X-Factor.

When another Avenger shows up, it’s Wanda, of course, since there’s a half-assed need to address Lorna’s sudden investment in her just-as-sudden half-siblings. But trying to make a joke out of something so serious as to be unforgivable is a poor choice, and it’s one of many that David makes during the run. Wanda is, by this point, an irredeemably terrible character and a bad person, someone who would greatly benefit the world by not being in it. If the point hadn’t been brought up, it could have been forgotten...and for the betterment of the narrative. But as it was brought up, it can’t really be ignored. It doesn’t help that, throughout her appearance, Wanda is pretty hard to like, when she’s not being noncommittally boring.

But this brings us to our last members of the team, and they’re two I can’t really address without bringing up the story further.

Warlock is a familiar face to anyone who knows the New Mutants, especially Doug. He’s kind of fun to have around, but it’s a real disappointment having the once-potent Magus turned into...yet another corporation. But as with Serval Industries, there’s no real commentary or satire to this decision. It’s just there, as if the absurdity of it, in and of itself, is supposed to be funny or clever somehow.

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

The story does do some interesting and even fun things, though, and it’s nice to see Warlock, especially with Doug around for him to play off of, as the two are perfect together.

But this also dovetails nicely into one of my most significant problems with All-New X-Factor, which is the fact that David manages to fuck up Doug, Warlock, and Danger all at once. He does this by a probably accidental or incidental storytelling bias, but so much of the series revolves around it: I’ve heard it called, and accurately, “straight people baby daddy problems”. That’s it in a nutshell.

Straight People Baby Daddy Problems

Danger trying to score makes up a level half of the series, and it’s amusing for a small amount of that time. Some of the reactions she gets are genuinely funny, and her fixation on sex does bring up some questions that most comics would never, ever even think of presenting. It also makes her much more likeable as a character, and it humanizes her to an extent, enabling the audience to sympathize with her more effectively. I don’t have a problem with this direction for Danger, especially since she’s basically just the emotionless big gun. She needed something, anything, to make her more compelling, and having her be curious about sexual relations does add an interesting queer dynamic to the whole thing, which I like.

But I’m not sure that was intentional. I’m not sure it was meant to be more than a throwaway joke that just kept coming up when David couldn’t think of anything else to punctuate a scene; sometimes it would work, sometimes it would just make me wonder if this was an attempt at a running gag that didn’t always fit.

The thing that made it not work was that Warlock and Doug were put at odds with each other because Danger approached Doug for sex, after Warlock and basically the entire rest of the team turned her down. It kind of feels creepy (but that’s not new territory in the series up to this point), but the part that doesn’t work is that David has Warlock coming off as jealous. Of Doug.

Maybe I’m not reading it the way it was intended, but if anyone in this situation, Warlock should be jealous of Danger. Warlock and Doug are not just friends, by any definition of the word. They have communed the very essences of their beings, basically mingled their souls, as well as their physical forms. Maybe David planned for the real target of jealousy to unfold, but he was aware that he had a certain number of issues left and kept writing as if he had unlimited time and space to address these things. After so much that amounted to nothing, why bring up something that is exactly the opposite of how these characters would act in that situation, then do nothing with it?

Even in this run, though, Warlock is very attached to Doug. For that to come out of nowhere makes it seem even more questionable. If that’s not what David intended and it was in fact supposed to be Warlock jealous of Danger and protective of Doug...he definitely didn’t present it very well.

I mean, it wasn’t well done by any means, but if he was aiming for that, he definitely missed and botched the shot.

But Doug constantly gets abuse heaped on him, and I really don’t like that. It was lazy, half-assed writing when it happened in New Mutants, and it’s lazy, half-assed writing here. At the very least, David has more respect for Doug than Abnett or Lanning seemed to (and certainly more than the patchwork of writers from New Mutants v1, least of all Louise Simonson), but at the same time, he’s only rarely allowed to be funny, strong, or compelling, much less actually do anything. He’s an immensely powerful character, as are all the members of the team, but they almost always end up playing second fiddle to Danger and Snow.

The last member of the team is Georgia, whose storyline is just...

Okay, I’ll be honest, I hated her. She was an annoying kid character who was fickle as anything and frankly came off as an obnoxious little twat. I didn’t care about her stupid story, her background of abusive, violent bigots, unlikely magic business, or her inane powers. She’s irritating all the time, she runs hot and cold and is utterly impossible to depend on, and there was no reason at all for them to basically make her part of the team instead of sending her to the X-school so she could actually learn to use her powers rather than being a danger to everyone around her.

She basically served no useful purpose and constantly derailed the stories to revolve around her, making her come off a lot like a Mary Sue type of character, a la Kitty Pryde, who is the Marvel Universe’s most painful Mary Sue. Once upon a time, Kitty was interesting and even sympathetic. That was a long time ago.

I suppose the thing that I disliked the most about having Georgia around was that when Luna finally showed up, she ended up basically pushed to the background in favor of Georgia. But if Luna had occupied that position instead of Georgia, then Pietro could have actually, you know, had some development during the series. Imagine the dynamic evolving between Pietro and Luna. The two haven’t had much opportunity to be together. I always thought Pietro and Crystal was a stupid relationship, and even worse that they were married and popped out a kid, but marriage was the big thing in comics at the time, and they often did that with characters they couldn’t think to do much else with.

(Not that they’ve changed much; nowadays, it’s just a method of killing characters off without really killing them off. They tried for years with Northstar, and then decided, hey, gay marriage is hot right now -- that’ll get him out of our hair. Subsequently, they had Iceman realize he himself was gay, but Jean-Paul had been shuffled off into the dead hell of comic-book marriage by then, essentially making useless the one “will they or won’t they?” storyline that gave both Bobby and Jean-Paul any meaning whatsoever in the past twenty-something years.)

Anyway, we’re stuck with Luna and Pietro has to live with his previous mistakes, which he does end up admitting. And I’ll admit myself, I have no idea what he’s talking about because my knowledge of and interest in Marvel from 2000 to now is minimal. It is nice to see him have to own up to his actions, though, and it is really great that he gets to connect with Luna again. But wouldn’t this have been even more meaningful if she had occupied the role of “clever young character learning about herself, her parent(s), and the world”? It would’ve required far less building of an ultimately useless character who basically tended to just shove the characters we know and actually like to the background or into some kind of fucked-up abuse. The elements were there, freely available, for David to use and create a close-knit, intimate group of characters who could develop richly between their party dynamic.

He just...missed it by that much.

Every time.

Dangling Threads

The Gambit story, close to the start of the run, brings up parts of Gambit’s backstory. Basically, the stupidest parts of his backstory, like the Thieves Guild and this floating island they somehow have now. And the aforementioned Danger, who behaves horribly during the story, which really should have added more pathos so that we could sympathize with her ordeal.

But it seemed to treat the people on the island as if they were nothing to be worried about, that it was okay that they were put in mortal danger by, uh, Danger. Everything was somehow resolved by one of the most awkward and frankly ludicrous non-resolutions ever, and it raised far more questions than it answered. And I mean, this is ludicrous even for a superhero comic. I could have got behind it even then, if it had been funny or witty or engaging, but...it really wasn’t.

Harrison Snow's 2099 shit doesn’t even show up until basically the last issue, but we’re treated to an ongoing saga of infidelity with his wife, which involves his secretary and then, later, Gambit. It’s very forced and awkward, but what makes it worse is that even after Remy is made aware of what happened and who she is -- which she was not honest about -- Snow abandons Gambit on a mission and he’s horribly abused and put in danger of his life. Which isn’t funny or amusing, and it’s nothing that anyone would just shrug off.

But that’s exactly what happens in the next issue, with a non-resolution to the subplot that addresses exactly none of the real concerns the characters, especially Gambit, should have. Especially given that he was shown to have concerns about even belonging on any team, least of all this one, in the issues up to then. He showed indications, and rightly, of being ready to leave the team over the debacle...and he should have, with an utter lack of any real dealing with the problem. Instead, he just apparently takes Snow at his casual handwave towards the whole situation. Sloppy writing.

The same can be said for Snow’s own subplot with his secretary and wife. The secretary basically drops out of the story early on, and the wife only pops up to be a hostage later. She’s kind of amusing for what of the story she factors into, but it feels like plot elements that were built up as being major are just dropped unceremoniously. Which is kind of a trend for this title.

But I said I didn’t hate the run, and I don’t. There are problems with it, but it’s not unenjoyable to read. It’s actually one of the more fun series that Marvel’s put out in a long time. It wasn’t perfect, or even close, but it at least didn’t nosedive into angst so deep that only teenagers wallowing in their own self-importance could tolerate it...like most X-titles unfortunately do. It tried to be more of an adventure title with interpersonal things, and that was why it was more enjoyable than not. It’s just too bad that David tended to revolve it around the “straight people baby daddy issues” and not anything more interesting or novel.

Gambit, especially, deserved better. He’s a well-loved character, even if he oddly sees comparatively little fanwork and merchandise. It’s unfortunate that most writers (and a good number of fans, for that matter) just don’t get him or what he’s about, tending to boil him down to just some “bad boy womanizer” type, which he really isn’t except superficially; he has a facade that he’s employed for so long that it’s second nature, but it’s all part of being a master thief. He’s not a simple character, which is probably why superhero comics tend to fail him; they simply don’t have the time, and often don’t have creators that care, to understand who he’s supposed to be.

There was even a bit of acknowledging the fact that Gambit is attractive, and he got to show a lot of skin, even appearing almost naked on a cover...at first. This vanished as the series went on. Even that would have been a refreshing change from most teams’ way of dealing with the character, who in All-New X-Factor became less and less prominent, and less and less relevant. We couldn’t even have eye candy Gambit, and we ended up with Remy in one of his dullest stretches, though mostly inoffensive.

It’s just disappointing that so often, the best and most meaningful traits of the character are overlooked or forgotten. Marjorie Liu’s run on X-23 -- my general dislike of the title character aside -- actually addressed a lot of things that most writers never touch upon or even notice. For example, some of the coded queer tones that come up repeatedly with Gambit and the fact that he’s a mature adult that often functions best when he occupies the role of an “older brother” type. Liu usually at least tried to write Remy believably and realistically, and that character was an interesting person with real feelings that were not easily pinned down.

I will say this, though: for all my disappointment in David’s portrayal of Gambit, he at least managed to avoid having Rogue make a guest appearance. It seems like a token inclusion anytime Gambit is anywhere, largely due to people bowdlerizing the characters and overblowing their relationship, and it always invariably makes Remy into barely an arm-warmer for Rogue. Everything about Gambit is cheapened by attaching him to Rogue so casually and easily, and every bit of development between the two is made even more puerile and obviously dysfunctional, rather than allowing the two to grow as people separately, accepting that they can one day possibly be friends, but they don’t really work together romantically.

If they ever did, if that all wasn’t just a convenient excuse for Remy’s well-hidden thoughts and feelings...but we won’t get into that here. That’s a discussion for another day.

Quicksilver came off well enough, mainly because there was so little done with him that what was done seemed even better. Doug saw some much-needed character improvement and building, though he didn’t get what he really deserved out of the run.

The rest was a mixed bag, mostly not much going on with them. Polaris seemed to stabilize remarkably fast, and that’s certainly a good thing for her. But there’s a plethora of issues waiting for her to address that might have been brought up, which were never really dealt with.

To the Future

I can only hope that whoever takes over the writing for any of these characters, they give it a little bit more thought than Peter David did when writing All-New X-Factor. I do hope that they keep the lighter tone, but even comedies have stakes. The tone in this series was insistently light despite the things that happened, and it wasn’t something that was really appropriate at all times, like dealing with Scarlet Witch.

Things don’t have to be relentlessly dark or oppressive in order to deal with serious problems, but you do have to actually deal with the problems, or else it can get as frustrating and feel as meaningless as a lot of this series did. David’s original run on X-Factor made its cast, who had largely been sidelined and neglected, feel new and interesting again, as well as realistically a group of friends. This run tries to recapture the same magic, but it falls short because of a lack of commitment all around. In some parts it’s overambitious, with its new characters it never develops or makes likeable or at least interesting. In others, it’s lazy and clumsy and fails to invest the effort it needs to realize and complete any of its concepts.

It is a pretty interesting series to read through, though. Would I recommend it? Sure! It isn’t a waste of time, and there are moments that made me laugh out loud, which is really not something most comics make me do anymore. At least, not intentionally. Straight people baby daddy problems notwithstanding, there’s some fun adventure to be had and a little character development that, thankfully, isn’t glacier movement that ruins the characters irreparably.

It just occasionally dents them and writes checks it can’t, or isn’t willing to, cash.

The art is splendid when it’s Carmine di Giandomenico, who did most of the interiors. He has a gorgeous style, and I love the very physical, tangible feel of the forms of the characters. In motion, they are graceful and spectacular, and there’s an obvious great knowledge and appreciation of anatomy. It’s especially nice to see that now, in comics, we have men that actually have genitals. And yes, this is an important thing in art and storytelling. It’s weird when men have smooth crotches that look like they’re made out of flat plastic.

Pop Mhan’s couple of issues are perfectly fine, but after getting used to Giandomenico, it seems almost jarring to have this different, perhaps more conventional, style presented, and it doesn’t quite feel suited to the story or the characters. The two issues Mhan does are two of the weakest, though, so that also doesn’t do the artist any favors.

Giandomenico’s bodies are really pleasing, and everything looks...right. There is also no shortage of amazing, luscious ass in the series, mostly Gambit’s, and it’s great to see for once. Pietro, at times, seems too bony, but he’s strangely not given much opportunity to show off at all; he’s either in costume or in casual clothes, rarely anywhere in-between.

My only complaint comes from Giandomenico’s portrayal of Remy, and while I do like seeing so much of him -- at least at first in the series -- the inveterate Gambit reader in me has to point out that Remy has body hair. Giandomenico only ever seems to put hair on Jean-Luc, which is cool, but Remy has always had it. It stands out especially when Kris Anka’s cover art has Remy with the hair, but the interiors don’t have it. Remy doesn’t depillate, he just trims.

I really wish I liked Anka’s work on the covers more, but it’s kind of uneven throughout. Sometimes I like what he does, sometimes I don’t care for it. I don’t hate his work, and I think he’s very expressive in his style and brings a lot of fun to the subjects. There’s life and liveliness and energy in what he does, which is what superheroes really need. He also doesn’t hesitate to “sexy up” male characters, which is nice. The cover to issue #3 is wonderful and adorable and everything it should be, whereas the cover to issue #9, naked Remy and all, just isn’t right. He’s too bulky, and the composition is uneven and strange.

I do appreciate Anka getting the full frontal sketch out there, though. Bravo! We need less body shame in general. This wave of puritanical bullshit is...well, bullshit. Honestly, maybe if All-New X-Factor had been a mature title and thrown some more adult dealing with things it brought up and danced around, it might have been better. Although the more adult-oriented Marvel titles tend to be up their own asses and filled with enough grimdark edgelord shit to make a high schooler tell them in embarrassment to take it down a few notches, David might have thrived in an environment where he could cut loose a bit more.

As it is, All-New X-Factor is something that is better than it probably deserved to be, but not as good as it could have, and should have, been. It’s something worth reading through at least once, but it may not hold up to repeated read-throughs. If you’re a big fan of any of the characters, at least give it a chance; they each have some moments to be in the spotlight, although not all of those are going to be good or necessarily even in-character for them. It’s just nice to see them, which unfortunately all of the team’s members suffer from not having happen enough.

But whoever was responsible for that Longshot redesign needs to be slapped. Whatever the shit garbage that was supposed to be...brush it under the rug with the rest of Axis and forget about it.

#x-factor #all-new x-factor #comic review #writing critique

1 note · View note