
So, I've been reading X-Men again. There are a few reasons why.
Chiefly, X-Men '97Â had a real hold on me. I was exactly the right age for X-Men: The Animated Series and the revival hit at just the right time, during a dark year for me that needed some escapism.
In addition to the monthly titles and regular trades, they published these sleek volumes that were somewhere in between, that basically replicate the experience of picking up a month's worth of issues. It continues the ongoing stories of all the books packaged together in such a way as to infer that this is one ongoing story... but it's not one. I appreciate the effort, but it's not.
Dawn of X vol. 13 collects Cable (2020) # 3-4, X-Men (2019) # 10, Empyre: X-Men (2020) # 1-2. Instead of collecting one of every issue that came out in a certain month, it collects the last two issues of the first arc of the Krakoan Cable series, a single-issue story that's really more of a prelude to the Empyre mini-series, and the first half of the Empyre: X-Men series.
So imagine buying a novel thinking it's one novel, only to open it and realize, no, actually its the last half of one novel, a short story, and then the opening chapters of a totally different novel. Only to then realize said short story is really just a prologue to the second novel. For non-comic book readers, that should give you some idea of what you're looking at here.
Still, there are some great surprises buried in this text. The last two issues of Cable vol1 revealed it's structure and it ended on a sweet moment between the Summers family. It's modelled after romp 80s movies like The Last Starfighter and Tron, but who doesn't like a good romp every once and a while? Really, Cable is returning to his roots here. No matter what Rob Liefeld says, Cable was blatantly based on The Terminator. He's not alone in this, The Brood are based off the Xenomorphs in alien. American comics have a long history of aping what's popular, especially X-Men. So as he's spawned out of 80s genre-movie crazes, it only makes sense that a writer should finally model Cable after a pastiche of 80s genre movies. Cable is dating sextuplets, and getting close to one in particular. Their mother disapproves, gives him the evil eye. Cable and the one sister he's getting closest to (Esme) go on a grand romp of an adventure, fighting robot alien SpaceKnights from Galador for the right to a sci-fi glowing sword. Even the SpaceKnights are references to ROM: The Spaceknight, a Marvel Comic based on an 80s toy of the same name. And he ends it by detonating a nuke, and that's seen as triumphant.
It really couldn't be move 80s in its execution or values if it tried, and once you accept that, it's great fun. But maybe it's just reading the two issues back to back, but structure started to reveal itself. Despite being science-fiction, the structure of this story is based strongly in portal fantasy. We start at home in Summer house, we get Cable's characterization with his family, he goes on a grand adventure with his girlfriend, fights an unambiguous threat, then returns at the end with a better connection to home. He's a flat character, but there's an arc here. The writer knows what he's going.
I lacks enough conflict for a four-corner opposition or a real concise point that I can articulate... but there's enough structure there that I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it's there, I'm just not seeing it. And it's fun.
Comments