Starting this post a little early, so I'll have time to walk to the store and back. Not writing it all ahead of time, though.
In this issue, Aaron Lopresti does the art and it kind of sucks.
Apparently Mystique and Lady Mastermind are half sisters. I didn't know that. And they're bitches. Total bitches. I knew that. But, they're also dumb because they leave Banshee alive, assuming that stabbing him through the throat will kill him. Fools!
The X-Men/X-Corps fight against the evil forces in Paris while Multiple Man absorbs his rogue duplicates. Archangel gets to fire his big gun. He always uses a gun. And, oops, te Eiffel Tower is destroyed.
At the X-Corps HQ, Jubilee, Husk and Stacy fight the Blob, who likes to beat up women.
Banshee releases Abyss, Paris is saved, Stacy blisses Blob out and then Abyss sucks up Mystique into himself. Banshee lives, but can't speak. And there's a page of people going "Shit, that sucked."
More thoughts when I return from the store . . .
***
Back from the store. So, the X-Corps storyline began with a lot of promise: an alternate group that has the same ultimate goal as the X-Men, but different methods. And instead of fostering this original idea, Joe Casey wrote a hack job. Why? Because he had to, because that's what the book is all about. Think of all of the great musicians, filmmakers and writers who began like they were going to do something new, something original, and then did bullshit that was just like something else. Pop eats itself. Everything is recycled. That is the message of Casey's Uncanny X-Men. He had to seem like he was going somewhere original only to do the same old, same old. To do otherwise would have been artistically wrong. There's entertainment and then there's art--and Casey sacrificed all entertainment value for the higher cause here.
Don't I sound like a total academic whackjob? I know some professors who would be so proud.
Phoenix #5 annotations
1 hour ago
