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Casual Krakoa: X-Men Red #1, Marauders #1, X-Force Doubleshot Live Chat

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On my weekly livestream, Casual Krakoa Live, I review the week’s X-Men comics, and answer big questions about what’s going on with Marvel’s merry mutants! You can listen or watch below:

* Spoilers Follow *

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Who Watched the Watchmen? Kingdom Come by Waid, Ross, Klein!

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It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

In the second issue of Kingdom Come⁠ — Mark Waid, Alex Ross, and Todd Klein’s DC elseworld magnum opus ⁠— Superman makes his grand return from self-imposed exile in order to respond to a new generation of brutal, erratic “heroes” who do more harm than good. He travels to a seedy dive bar filled with punk rock aesthetics, disrespectful youths, and 90s armor clad brawlers, where we see a cameo of none other than Rorschach, from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. The implication is quite clear: Waid, Ross and Klein are responding to the influence Watchmen has on superhero comics, by taking Rorschach on his face as a violent, morally gray, and compromised hero that represents a new normal. Rorschach in the same room as these characters, where our point-of-view, Norman McKay, calls them “kids,” “monsters,” and “beasts” all before Superman, very paternalistically declares “Party’s over” has the same weight as father coming home to set the children right, crashing their fun and wondering “What happened to the world? Things were better in my day!” [Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Kingdom Come by Waid, Ross, Klein!

When the Avengers Ruled, Prelude (Pt. 0)

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[covers by George Pérez; Sal Buscema; and Pérez]
Yes, there was a time when the Avengers ruled, I mean, really ruled—ruled with genuine aspirational coolness! Or maybe, this is just a catchy title for a whole series of articles on Avengers milestones beginning in the midst of the full-steam-ahead Bronze Age and arriving one atop the other with the Roger Stern run, before the abyss of the ’90s, until the revitalization of Earth’s Mightiest with Kurt Busiek and George Pérez triumphant. Yet as much as this will be a love letter to some of my fave superhero comics, there will be plenty of criticism in the early going, especially when it comes to some of the more insufferably entitled men dominating this franchise. Still, I don’t want to focus on the negative even as I won’t shy away from addressing badness where it arises. What’s more interesting is that there is so much good material in this era (which, no doubt, is not lost on Disney!), but for me, the post-Hickman era of Avengers comics has been deeply, deeply, deeply disappointing. While 21st-century professional consistency (corporate streamlining) might be glaringly absent from the earlier comics, we’ll highlight those areas where those raw early times pushed in compelling directions that are almost wholly absent today.

So, hopefully, dear reader, you find this project of interest at least for all the neat ideas and characters that have fallen by the wayside in recent years. The fact that in the 1980s Monica Rambeau was Captain Marvel and held tenure as team leader of the Avengers is just one instance of the rich potential here that has been sorely neglected, especially with the dull and constrained narrowness of Aaron’s current work—which bears only the most superficial trappings of epic adventure (an unfortunate downfall from his legendary Thor). Whether or not you agree on this last, though, I think most Earth’s Mightiest fans will discover and rediscover some fascinating bits of forgotten lore, both in-universe and behind the scenes.

In this prelude piece, we’ll do a brief rundown of two early famous epics that didn’t work successfully as coherent stories. Future pieces will delve such titles as The Serpent Crown Saga, The Korvac Saga, Nights of Wundagore, Absolute Vision, Under Siege, Avengers Forever—and quite a few more! If you’re familiar with these sagas, hopefully you’ll still find something interesting, new or insightful to take away. Of course, enthused readers are welcome to leave a comment for friendly correction or disagreement. Learning anew and reconsidering based on well-meaning debate are essential to a healthy brain 😉. For fans unfamiliar with this earlier material, I hope only to pique your curiosity in seeking out this fascinating content. [Read more…] about When the Avengers Ruled, Prelude (Pt. 0)

X-Men Epic Collection: Bishop’s Crossing Review!

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A scant six weeks after X-Men Vol. 2 #1 became the best-selling comic book of all time, Chris Claremont ended his fifteen-year run as writer of the X-Men. His departure (the final issue credited to him is X-Men Vol. 2 #3) wasn’t unexpected–news of his leaving Marvel had leaked a few months before the launch of the new series, and all three issues had been published after he’d left the company. Claremont had agreed to help launch Marvel’s second X-Men title as a kind of severance package for himself (he has since said the royalties from that launch basically paid for his house). Claremont ultimately left the X-Men because his artistic collaborator at the time, Jim Lee, wanted to do more traditional stories with familiar plot beats and villains. Claremont wanted to continue to push the X-Men forward, breaking new creative ground as he’d been doing for the past fifteen years. When it became clear that Lee’s approach was the one favored by their editor, Bob Harras (as well as with Marvel’s sales and marketing departments), and that Claremont’s time as the ultimate arbiter of the fates of the X-Men was up, he left. Bob Harras was comfortable with letting Chris Claremont–the man who, alongside a series of artistic partners, launched the X-Men to the top of the sales charts and birthed an entire interconnected line of “X-books”–leave, because he still had Jim Lee. [Read more…] about X-Men Epic Collection: Bishop’s Crossing Review!