1. For New-ish Readers: What's This "Some Fantastic Place"? I. It's been something of an intense few weeks on this blog. I know I'm trying to teach myself to write to tight and demanding deadlines, but perhaps everyone might benefit from something of a lighter touch today. It's time, I think, to attend to the business of remembering how comic books are so often fun. And not "also fun", or "just fun", or "simple fun", but fun-fun. And being relentlessly and quite honestly positive about the enjoyable aspects of comic books is just what the "Some Fantastic Place" pieces here on this blog have always been about. So, why not take a reviving and super-hero friendly wander with your host here through Matt Fraction's stories in the "Nation-X" hardcover released just this past week in the UK?
II. If you're new around these parts, the following is a quote from a previous blog which should give you some idea of what to expect from these "Some Fantastic Place" pieces here at TooBusyThinkingAboutMyComics;
"It's really tough working out how good a comic is. So this time, let's not bother. Let's take a more relaxed and emotional path to evaluation. Let's do away with all pretense at intellectual analysis and abandon all critical thought, fanboy indignation and continuity cop-ness. Let's just start looking for good things. Little good things, perhaps, just tiny nuggets of fun. Imaginative single panels, witty snatches of dialogue, unexpectedly appropriate sound effects. All the things we would have noticed and treasured when we had far less comic books to indulge in and far more time on our hands."
Pleasing Moments no. 1: Form And Content And ClaremontismsI. It's genuinely touching how often and how precisely Matt Fraction channels his inner Chris Claremont in the stories collected in "X-Nation". Or, at least, I presume that's what Mr Fraction is doing. For his dialogue here is often more formal and more deliberately prosaic than in, for example, his contemporaneous Iron Man scripts. And it does seems reasonable to suggest that Mr Fraction is in this way tipping his hat to the modern X-Men's most influential creator, or, perhaps, that Mr Fraction has at one time or another read so much of Mr Claremont's work that the latter's voice has indelibly imprinted itself on whichever part of the Fraction right cerebral cortex is being used for the writing of the X-Men.
If it is the latter situation, then I know how Mr Fraction feels. When he has Professor Xavier declare "Emma, I love Scott like he was my own son." (519:18:4, see above) in that familiar Claremontian manner, it hits with a nostalgic rush that hauls me back to the early 1980's. I'm at university, I'm taking the Greyhound across America, I'm working in soft drinks warehouses and paint factories, and all the time, once or twice a month, there's Chris Claremont's "X-men" as part of the everyday landscape of the time.
II. Or those apparent Claremontisms might be the result of the decision made to, bar a few character-identifying captions, present all the non-visual information in the Nation-X stories in the form of word balloons. This extreme example of post-Bendis narrative orthodoxy leads to the need to explain some exceedingly complex comic-book concepts in the form of conversations. Here's one of my favourites, as Psylocke and Iceman prepare to fight off a giant sea monster ("Dark Reign: The List - X-men 112:2, see above):
psy: "This may not work, Bobby -- I'm still not quite used to this power set. But I believe if you open yourself up to me I should be able to amplify your abilities. Just relax into your thoughts and feelings ... "
ice: "Believe me, emotional transparency has never been one of my issues ... "
Well, those sentences may not have been composed entirely of language redolent of the '80's, but if those Shooteresque info-dumps don't take you back, then you either weren't there or you weren't reading closely enough. And for a while, reading the "X-Men" damn closely was more than a four-colour pleasure. It was an act of faith. And in the rituals of that faith, now as well as several decades ago, opaque and wonderfully "Wah? Huh?" Claremontisms, such as Psylocke's declaration that an opponent is so dangerous that "Even her thoughts become transparent ... " (521:4:3), become as pleasurable and comforting as the catechism must have been to believers when intoned in Latin.
Pleasing Moments no. 2: Before The Claws Are PoppedI do worry about the no-narrative captions rule in these X-Men issues, but there are undoubtedly moments when the inability to eavesdrop on a character's thoughts throws the responsibility of figuring out what's going on back productively to the reader. Consider the scene in the X-Men's Blackbird (520:1:4, above) where we see Colossus, Psylocke and Wolverine on their way to a real big punch-up in New York City. Artist Greg Land's composition is an effective one, concentrating on showing how each of the characters portrayed are lost in their own thoughts, as you'd expect during a long flight on a dangerous mission. And with no extra information except for the highly effective colouring by Justin Ponsor, who grounds the reader in the understanding through his choice of a narrow range of reds and purple that it's night-time and there's a great deal of impressive electronic machinery around, it's up to us to work out what everyone's thinking. There are no other clues at hand. So, I found myself wondering why Colossus was armoured up. Wouldn't that make the Blackbird's travel-time considerably slower? Is he worried about the battle to come, or perhaps nervous about all the times the Blackbird's been blown up while he's on it, a tradition going back to the New X-Men's second appearance? Or is it a reflection of his inability to suppress his rage and loneliness since Kitty Pryde has been lost to him?
Well, I don't know, anymore than I can guess what Psylocke's thinking of while looking so alluring in the front seat. But I distrust my ability to interpret that expression even more than I do my analysis of Colossus.
And Wolverine? Well, I don't think he's bothered by very much at all. Battles, dangerous foes, transcontinental supersonic flight? He's just not concerned. Which is, of course, absolutely appropriate.
Pleasing Moments no. 3: I Think We'll Need More Than A Flow Chart HereI. There are nine individual issues written by Mr Fraction in the "Nation-X" collection, and within those pages there are, not counting the odd background character with a stray "Wha..?" to offer, 47 speaking roles, as well as Marrina the sea-monster too, bless her. And then there are 30 informing captions giving the readers basic information about leading characters and their roles and powers, including several for younger mutants whom Rogue absorbs the powers of that we never hear speak at all.
II. When the control of a major American mainstream comic-book publisher falls into my oh-so-worthy hands, I will be undoubtedly hiring Mr Fraction to write the lead book of whatever the most crowded and continuity-heavy franchise my company owns the rights to is. For there's no point complaining that "X-Nation" has too many characters and too many plot-lines, though for a reader such as myself who's well out of the mutant-adventure loop, it certainly can feel that way at times. But that's not what the "X-Men" book is concerned with. To complain about it being crowded is to moan that Matter-Eating Lad keeps eating stuff. It's a redundant criticism. And here, in addition to the usual hectic and chock-a-bloc business of Marvel's X-Universe, Mr Fraction also has to make sure that his book supports the status quo of "Dark Reign", while taking advantage of the opportunities that line-wide crossover offers too. On top of that, there's 13 mutants or supporting players which, to a greater or lesser extent, have their own character arcs played out across these issues too. And it ought to be said that it's all done pretty much effectively, and though there's a little playing clever, hard and fast with key plot-developments in places, the surprise is that with so much in the air to juggle, so much gets done, and so little gets dropped.
III. An minor but telling example of this attention to detail while attending to the major story arcs, both self-generated and company-imposed, can be found at N-X:9:2, where the power-redundancies within the huge cast of mutants on what was once Asteroid-X is embraced rather than skated over. With a substantial number of Prince Namor's subjects to move out of harm's way, two X-Men from different eras with overlapping power-sets are put to work together to get the job done. It shows an attention to detail which some other writers might not possess, to have both Magik and Pixie doing effectively the same thing at the same time, and the scene certainly helps to neuter any criticism that there's no point having characters with such similar abilities in the X-Universe. But of course there's a "need". There's nothing to be gained by killing off one of the teleporters just because there's a second jaunter around. How can the X-Men teleport entire populations of under-sea people right across the globe without having at least two teleporters at hand?"Ipso fatso", as the Perishers used to declare.
Pleasing Moments no. 4: The Undersea Alan Davis
In the panels above, Alan Davis and Mark Farmer achieve what generations of artists have mostly failed to. They produce a vision of undersea life in a superhero universe that doesn't look as if one form or another of a surface city has simply been dropped pretty-much-whole onto a sandy beach on an ocean floor. Those oh-so-deceptively simple buildings in N-X:3:1 appear both familiar and alien, the light from their mostly-silhouetted forms reminding us how dark it must be at the bottom of the South China Sea, and how fundamental those structures must be to the survival of their inhabitants. And then in n-x:3:2, Mr Davis again breaks with the standard-model representation of life under the ocean waves. Look, people are floating as they harvest the crops, their bodies shifting to allow them to balance where they are. Nobody is standing, or seeming to levitate, or swimming in a non-descript fashion. Finally, in X-N/3:3, we're shown three of the aquatic farmers and they're each distinct from each other. There's a very young boy, a clearly older tattooed man, and a woman whose age can be pegged between the two. They're not dressed in identikit "under-the-sea" clothes, they each display variations on a common appearance, and consequently their slaughter by Marrina carries far more weight than such a plot-furthering, people-slaughtering scene normally would. DC really missed an opportunity when they bumped Mr Davis up from drawing "Aquaman" to "Batman" in '80's. He was a fine Batman artist, with and without the Outsiders in tow, but it was Aquaman that was in need, and probably still is now too.
Pleasing Moments no. 5: Explaining The Impossible To The Unbeliever
There are peculiarly sublime and ridiculous moments particular to long-standing comic book universes, the beauty of which would be impossible to explain to anybody who isn't already a years-long convert to the "realities" of a superhero world. Consider the panel shown above, from the climax of the "Nation-X" one-shot at at N-X:20/21. By the time the neophyte has had it explained to them, for example, who Namor is, and who Marrina is, and how the latter had been corrupted by Norman Osbourne, and how the marriage between Prince of Atlantis and Alpha Flight stalwart had developed and been destroyed, and what "Dark Reign" was, and who the Sentry is ..... well, once anybody outside this particular loop was fully informed of what they need to know to make sense of the scene, they'd be so stunned and perhaps alienated by information overload that there'd be little chance they'd enjoy the scene at all. In fact, they'd probably need a stiff drink just to rid themselves of the suspicion that at least one other person in their life was constantly processing all this arcane stuff around in their heads when they should be, for example, considering their tax-returns, or Sunday lunch.
Suffice to say, I haven't attempted to explain to the Splendid Wife why I laughed so with delight at the scene where Namor threw the huge monstrous head of his poor dead wife through the side of an Oscorp building at Norman Osbourn. I'm certain to never try to illuminate why it's so fun and knowing that such a huge missile propelled by a single flying man should have managed to pin its' target to the floor without doing any significant damage to Osbourn at all.It's absurd, it's splendid, it's funny as hell, and it's chilling too. In fact, it's the disturbing undertones of it which stayed with this reader the longest. If any of us can't enjoy that scene, then perhaps something of our super-hero comic-book heart has grown cold.
Pleasing Moments no. 6: Protecting The Powerless Is What Super-Heroes Do
And finally the last tip of the head, the last indulgence of this palate-cleansing exercise, takes us to the scene of mutant non-combatants being sheparded to safety at 516:20:2. One of the least-often portrayed functions of the super-hero is the responsibility for "protecting the innocent". Truth be told, I'd usually far more prefer to watch our costumed heroes help scared and confused bystanders towards safety than to watch yet another building getting dropped on yet another costume. There's something so comforting and charming about seeing those with power acting to help those without, and it just isn't done enough. As I know I've said before, our super-heroes will always be, for most of us, those bright and strong figures who would have stood between us and those who bullied us if only they'd have known that we needed their help. Deep in our hearts, we want to believe that we might whisper the name of our favourite cape'n'coloured-booty character when things are at their worst and they'll appear, dragging the X-Men or whoever behind them. To save the day.Or is that just me? I don't think so.
Result: I enjoyed it all. I always do. I wouldn't write about a comic-book in a "Some Fantastic Place" if there weren't good things to be talked about within its' covers. "Nation-X" was a fine confection to get lost in of a Saturday afternoon while the sun was untypically seasonally high and hot, the Splendid Wife showing Splendid Folks round the garden, and England winning at the cricket. Huzzah!
Coming soon: A Letter To Dalgoda, Golden Age Super-hero Origins As Fairy-Stories, Curt Swan's control of vanishing lines, or something else entirely if the previous ideas don't work out. I wish you a splendid day! Do take care an'stuff.
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