The Marvel 52, Part Three: The X-Men

One of the frustrating things about the X-Men titles has always been the over-abundance of them. This is a problem with superhero comics in general. If people really like one series, they'll certainly buy three more series with the same character. And while that's apparently true economically, it's something I'd stay away from in my who-cares-if-they-make-money Marvel 52. There will be no Spider-Man line, no multiple titles for Thor or Captain America just because they have movies coming out this year. That's one of the advantages of not having to worry about things like actual sales.

The X-Men are a little different though.There's certainly enough going on in their corner of the Marvel Universe to warrant ten titles, but even so I tried to be sparing about the number of team books, giving the bulk of my spots to solo titles and a couple of two-character team-ups.

32. X-Statix by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred



I'm ashamed to say that I missed this the first time around, but I can blame that completely on the number of other X-Men series I was buying at the time. This weird, highly critically acclaimed series got lost in the madness for me, but it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for now and I'd like another shot at it.

31. Namora and Marrina by Jeff Parker and Aaron Renier

I always loved team-up books as a kid. Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One; Brave and the Bold. What I don't think I've ever seen though was an ongoing series featuring the same two characters teamed up every month. I'm not counting two-person teams that were created to go together like Hawk and Dove or Cloak and Dagger. I'm talking about characters who were created independently of each other, but could share a title for thematic reasons. There've been plenty of mini-series like The Vision and the Scarlet Witch or Hawkeye and Mockingbird, but no ongoings and I'm not sure why. I'd love to give it a try.

Namora and Marrina seem like a really cool pairing. Both are underwater characters and outsiders to the Marvel Universe. Namora was missing for 50 or 60 years and is still reacquainting herself with current events. Marrina's been out of action for not quite that long, but her alien nature and tragic history makes her even more remote from other Marvel characters. I'd love to see a series in which these two women rely on each other, with Namora perhaps acting as a mentor for younger Marrina. And since they've both been romantically involved with Sub-Mariner at some point, there's some built-in drama already waiting to be exploited.

Jeff Parker knows Namora better than anyone else and I can think of no one else outside of Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak whom I'd rather see write the modern version of Marrina. If you've read The Unsinkable Walker Bean, you know that Aaron Renier's the perfect guy for an ocean adventure series.

I may need to defend why I'm calling this an X-Men book. Namora's related (genetically and thematically) to Namor, who's Marvel's "first mutant" and whose most recent series was nominally an X-title; Marrina is a member of Alpha Flight, an X-Men spin-off. Which brings me to...

30. Sasquatch and Puck by John Rozum and Jason Copland




These two characters have worked well together since Alpha Flight #1. They're bickering opposites (Sasquatch is the educated strongman; Puck is the rough-edged acrobat) so this would be a fantastic buddy-series. John Rozum (Midnight Mass, Xombi) knows a thing or eighteen about writing banter while keeping the action moving and I need to see Jason Copland (Kill All Monsters) draw some Alpha Flight characters on a regular basis.

29. Alpha Flight by Fred Van Lente, Greg Pak, and John Byrne

Absolutely no offense intended to Dale Eaglesham, who's doing a fine job on the current Alpha Flight, but it was John Byrne and Alpha Flight that pushed me from casual comics reader to bona fide comics nerd. His representations of those characters are definitive and I'd love to see him draw them again.

28. Kitty Pryde by Jen Wang and Kate Beaton

This replaces all the New Mutants and Young X-Men Academy Whatnot books for me. It's a YA series about a young Kitty Pryde in her early days at Xavier's. Because it's for younger readers, damn the continuity and fill Xavier's with other classmates for her to interact with. But it doesn't have to be just high school drama. She could also go on adventures with various X-Men (preferably one-on-one) to keep things interesting.

Jen Wang (Koko Be Good) and Kate Beaton would keep this light and fun.

27. Jean Grey by G Willow Wilson and Ryan Kelly



I'm not a huge fan of Jean Grey, but I could be. She's got a rich history and interesting powers; she just gets killed off and sidelined so much that I've never had a chance to grow as fond of her as I think she probably deserves. So I'd love to bring her back from the dead again (she's still dead, right?), get her away from Scott, and see what makes her tick. Since it's a character study, I'd just turn Wilson (Air, Mystic) loose and see where she went. And Ryan Kelly's incredibly grounded, yet exciting art would be perfect for it.

26. Nightcrawler by Paul Tobin and Ted Naifeh

Total, genre-crossing swashbuckler. Let Paul Tobin go nuts. Why this hasn't happened already, I don't know. And Ted Naifeh's perfect for putting a demonic-looking hero into all sorts of thrilling settings.

25. Rogue by Vera Brosgol and Chris Bachalo



Though I'm not at all current on what she's been up to the last couple of years, Rogue's been my favorite X-Man for a long, long time. She's pretty angsty and melancholy, and Brosgol's (Anya's Ghost) good at balancing that with humor so that it doesn't become depressing. And no one draws Rogue like Chris Bachalo.

24. Wolverine by Peter Milligan and Kody Chamberlain

Honestly, there are a few series that made my 52 just because it wouldn't be Marvel Comics without them. I'm so over-exposed on Wolverine that it's hard to think of an approach that would make me excited about him. I bet Milligan could though, if he was turned loose. He's got a strange approach to comics and Wolverine can use something different. Kody's (Shang Chi, Sweets) got a great, loose style that'll keep the comic interesting and exciting to look at.

23. The X-Men by Rich Koslowski and Art Adams



I always like the X-Men best when there's a thick slather of serious melodrama over the trips into space and evil mutant fights. I'm not being sarcastic; that dark tone is right there in their charter: Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them. But it also needs to know when to have some fun and that's where Rich Koslowski (Three Fingers, The King, BB Wolf and Three LPs) comes in. All of his work takes fun, goofy concepts (Mickey Mouse's tell-all story about his early career at Disney, an Elvis impersonator who may not be impersonating, a jazz-age retelling of The Three Little Pigs) and throws a dark veil over them that makes you think without weighting the whole thing down. As for Art Adams...well, he's Art Freaking Adams.

If I were really doing this, I'd have some long discussions with Rich about which characters we wanted to include, but since this is fantasy, my dream line-up would be Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Beast, and Emma Frost. With frequent appearances by Kitty, because she's totally in love with Colossus.

I'm taking a break from this tomorrow and Thursday to focus on Westerns and cephalopods, but I'll be back to in on Friday with Marvel Knights.

Art Show: Science!

Journey to the Center of the Earth drill



By Peter Montgomery. [Brass Goggles]

Hulk



By Amanda Conner. [Listen to Jimmy. Link is NSFW.]

Rogue



By Caanan Grall.

Alpha Flight



By Phil Jimenez. [Comic Book Resources by way of Alpha Flight Collector]

Art Show: Avenged by Agents Extraordinary

Mr. Freeze



By Mark Grambau. [Brother Cal]

Rogue



By Terry Moore. [Giant-Size Marvel]

Avengers '52



By Jay Piscopo. [Kirby-Vision]

Inspired by this awesomeness:



Bidi Bidi Bidi



By Mathieu Reynès.

Kill All Monsters!



By Jason Copland. So close to an announcement...

Retro-Robot



By George O'Connor.

That's not a burning bush



By Rosh.

Comics News: The McDuffie Principle

Sufferin' Shad!



Snell totally blows my image of Namor as a cool, tough guy with multiple examples of the sea-king's hilariously ridiculous exclamations.

The Gamekeeper Omnibus



Back when Virgin Comics still existed, the only series of theirs that I was really interested in was Guy Ritchie's Gamekeeper. Partly because it was a Guy Ritchie concept, a lot because the story sounded cool (the gamekeeper of a huge, wooded estate turns the tables on the black ops team that have attacked his employer and destroyed his life), but mostly because it was written by two of my favorite writers: first Andy Diggle and then Jeff Parker.

Unfortunately, Virgin folded before the entire story could be collected, but Dynamite's now got that covered. The 256-page story is coming out in August as a $25 paperback.

Pass the Comics: The Mummy



I didn't find enough comics for a separate "Pass the Comics" post this week, so we'll just include this one here. [The Horrors of It All, Part One and Part Two]

"I can't do this--"



Talking about continuity and canon, Dwayne McDuffie once made a comment the wisdom of which has stuck with me ever since. "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen." That's why I'm not at all upset about the stupidity of the revelation that Rogue apparently had sex with the Sentry at some point.

It certainly is a ridiculous development (Topless Robot has exactly the right reasons about why), but even though I technically have seen it (in the panels above), I'm still claiming protection under the McDuffie Principle. In fact, I'm broadening that principle to, "If I don't like it, it didn't happen."

I'm tired of letting publishers dictate what is and isn't canon. They've proven over and over again that they'll let all manner of silliness go on, so why should they get to be the shepherds? Let them do what they do: throw tons of stories out there with various levels of quality. I'll pick the ones I like and build my own canon, thank you very much. Paul Jenkins' fan fiction doesn't have to be a part of it just because Marvel published it.

Art Show: It's a Kind of Magic

Aquaman in High Speed



By Leo Matsuda.

Mermaid



Artist Unknown [Never Sea Land]

Baroque Battle Bug



By Sam Nielson. [Avalanche Software Art Blog]

Man-monsters, space girls, heroes in fishnets, Johnny Quest fights robots, and the coolest Fantastic Four line-up ever after the break.

Art Show: Batman's got a gun!

Fish Sub



By Jeremy Vanhoozer.

The Beasts of Tarzan



By Neal Adams. Thanks to the Ballantine Books editions of the Tarzan stories I had as a kid, Adams' version of Tarzan will always be the definitive one for me. In fact, it was probably his covers that made me pick those books up in the first place and turned me into a Tarzan fan. [Illustrateurs has a whole bunch of them.]

Jungle Girl



By J Scott Campbell. [Sent to me in email by a friend who obviously knows me very well]

Batman, She-Hulk, Rogue, and a space girl after the break.

Art Show: The Unbelievable Secret of the Sasquatch!

Aquaman



By Nick Kilislian.

Sea Monster Approaches Beach Boys c.1969 to Get Pet Sounds Signed



By John Allison. [Robot 6]

Sasquatch, a four-armed ape, and John Berkey after the break.

Elsewhere on the Internets: Cownt Tales, Tumor, and Rogue

Here's what else I've been up to online lately...

Cownt Tales interview



My Robot 6 cohort Tim O'Shea was cool enough to interview me about the Cownt this week.

In other exciting Cownt Tales news, the book is finally available to order on IndyPlanet for anyone who prefers to do it that way. I've updated the Cownt Tales entry in the sidebar to reflect that too.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs

Tumor isn't exactly the kind of comic I usually pick to talk about here. The gangsters aren't monkeys and the cops don't wear jetpacks. It's a mystery, but it's not a murder mystery. It is, however, exciting to read and - though dark at times and touching at others - a great deal of fun. It's a crime comic - noir in every sense of the word - and the emotional depth that Fialkov and Tuazon give the main character makes it an engrossing experience I didn't want to finish. So while it may not be a big adventure comic, it is excellent.

It's the story of an elderly private investigator named Frank Armstrong who's hired by a crime lord named Gibson to find his missing daughter. Obviously it's not going to be as simple as that and as Frank begins his investigation he starts to ask questions about Gibson's motivations for finding the girl. There's rumors that she ran off with some money. Is Gibson trying to get her out of trouble or planning to kill her? How is Frank's old cop pal involved? Hell, how are all the cops in LA involved for that matter?

Answering these questions would be hard enough without the brain tumor Frank's carrying around. He's in his last days, struggling to stay on his feet, fighting the seizures that are coming more and more frequently, and helpless against the hallucinations and memories that threaten to overtake him. It doesn't help that the girl he's looking for looks a lot like Frank's dead wife. Or that the situation with Gibson's daughter seems to mirror the events that led to Frank's wife's death. With Frank so sick, he's having a hard time keeping it all straight. Past and present are merging.

Read the rest and see Phil Hester agree at Robot 6.

What Are You Reading?



I used to talk about Rogue quite a bit here, but since dumping single issues for trade-waiting, I've had to take a break and let the collected volumes catch up to where I left off. They finally have and I talked about it for last week's Robot 6 group feature. The sort version is that I love Mike Carey's story and I'll definitely be buying the next collection.

Art Show: Hulk drop ice cream!

Rime of the Ancient Mariner



By Joseph Noel Paton. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Science! Invention!



Not sure who did this one. [Poulpe Pulps]

There's something about an Aqua Velvet Man



By Zenon Jimenez. [William Travis Robison]

Creature from the Black Lagoon



By Brent Schoonover. [House of Duck]

Kim Possible



By Chris Butler.

Selene



By Grant Gould.

A Couple of Hulks



By Grant Gould.



By Paul Taylor.

Both of these were made 'specially for me. I'm gradually getting some of my original convention art scanned in.

Zatanna



By Grant Gould.

Spidey and Mary Jane



By Mike Maihack. I'm not a huge Spider-Man fan, but I love the joy on Mary Jane's face in this piece.

Rogue



By Jess Hickman. Another one from my personal accumulation.

Calling Captain Future!



Not sure who did this one either.

Phantasms



By Anthony Carpenter.

10 Favorite Movie Characters: Adaptation Edition

Siskoid started it this time. Since we both limited our original 10 Favorite Movie Characters lists to characters who'd originated in movies, he thought it would be fun to do a separate list of characters adapted from other media. And so did I.

I didn't start off with extra rules for myself this time, but in order to trim my list down to 10 (from an original 23) I decided that the final cut would be made up only of characters where I actually prefer the movie version to the original. I'll list the other 13 at the end without much in the way of additional comments.

Incidentally, I'm glad I waited to read Siskoid's list until after I finished my own. His would have heavily influenced mine since I also love - amongst others - Michael Caine's Alfred and JK Simmons' Jonah Jameson.

1. Robin Hood (Robin Hood)



I didn't see Errol Flynn's version of Robin Hood until I was an adult, so my childhood image of the character was shaped mostly by Howard Pyle's thorough, but mostly dry accounts of his exploits. As a result, I loved the idea of Robin Hood, but didn't truly fall in love with the character until Disney turned him into a dashing, cunning, swashbuckling fox (whom I still prefer to Errol Flynn, by the way).

2. Henry V (Henry V)



Kenneth Branagh is single-handedly responsible for making me fall in love with Shakespeare. His performance in Henry V is what did it. Until then I thought Shakespeare's history plays were pretty dull, dry stuff (I'd never seen one performed at that point), but Branagh brought it to life. He made it exciting to watch young, foolish Prince Hal transform himself into a competent and inspirational leader.

3. Gomez Addams (Addams Family, Addams Family Values)



Let's face it: Gomez Addams in Charles Addams' cartoons doesn't have a lot of personality. And though John Astin is funny and charming as the character, he doesn't equal the hilarious, manic insanity of Raul Julia's performance. Julia made me want to be Gomez. (Though Angelica Huston as Morticia didn't make the fantasy any less appealing either.)

4. Hawkeye (The Last of the Mohicans)



I couldn't make it all the way through James Fenimore Cooper's famous novel. Conversely, I can't stop watching the Michael Mann movie. One of my favorite things to do is watch Daniel Day Lewis play dapper, stuffy Cecil in A Room with a View and then immediately watch him as the iconically rugged Hawkeye. His range as an actor blows my mind.

5. Porthos (The Three Musketeers)



The literary Porthos is okay, but he's also an arrogant, vain blowhard. Platt's version, on the other hand, is a dashing pirate. I wish this production would've spent some money on costumes, because other than that it's my favorite adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

6. Rogue (X-Men)



I've always been a big fan of Rogue and by all rights I should have hated the changes they made to her in X-Men. But Anna Paquin made me love her all over again as a completely different character by combining the least annoying parts of Kitty Pride with the pathos of Rogue. And Paquin is such a talented actress that I root for her so much harder than I root for the comics version (who, frankly, can be infuriating at times).

7. Boromir (The Fellowship of the Ring)



I hate Boromir in Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. He's a whiny, deluded, backstabbing bastard. I get that we're supposed to think he's more than that, but we're not given any reason to see him as more. Not until Sean Bean came along we're not. Thanks to him and Peter Jackson's script, Boromir becomes a tragic character that I deeply wish could've come to a different end.

8. Susan Pevensie (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)



I saw the Narnia films before I read CS Lewis' series and wow was I ever disappointed in Susan as Lewis wrote her. The film version of Susan is the most hesitant of the Pevensie siblings, but she eventually comes around and her early reluctance makes her final acceptance that much more sweet and powerful. I like her much more than Lucy who seems to come to faith so easily. Susan's more relatable because she has to work so hard. Unfortunately, Lewis' Susan never overcomes and becomes a symbol of lost faith. What a rip off.

9. Tony Stark (Iron Man)



Comics Tony Stark: Rich jerk who's only interesting when he's making me hate him for killing Captain America.

Movie Tony Stark: "I'm sorry. This is the fun-vee. The humdrum-vee is back there."

10. Scotty (Star Trek)



Absolutely no disrespect intended to James Doohan who eventually turned Scotty into a sweet, lovable character, but his young Scotty wasn't sweet and lovable. Maybe I'm missing the point (and let me know if I am), but as far as I can tell he was mostly there to fix the ship, run the transporters, and occasionally make us chuckle. Simon Pegg's Scotty, on the other hand, was the brightest spot in an already fun, bright movie.

Characters I like about the same as the versions they're adapted from:

• Ebenezer Scrooge (pretty much every version of A Christmas Carol)
• James Bond (as played in Doctor No, From Russia with Love, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, Goldeneye, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace)
• Frankenstein's Monster (as played in Bride of Frankenstein)
• Captain Blood (as played by Errol Flynn in Captain Blood)
• Jayne (Serenity, which is kind of cheating since it was the same actor playing the same character from Firefly, but still...)

Adapted characters I like, but have never seen or read about the original version:

• Lucy Honeychurch (A Room with a View)
• Amos Starkadder (Cold Comfort Farm)
• Mouse Alexander (Devil in a Blue Dress)
• Severus Snape (the Harry Potter films)
• John Rambo (First Blood)
• Cal McAffrey (State of Play)
• Mr. Knightley (Emma)
• V (V for Vendetta)