It often feels like one step forward, two steps back, doesn’t it? What bothers me is how unnecessary those two steps always seem, to me. I don’t see the point, the up side. If Casey were writing Deadpool as part of the cast, I’m sure we’d get a meta joke about ‘genre conventions’ or something equally witty and quippy meant to be cover up how bland and clichéd a creative choice it is. Cowardly is actually my preferred term for the choice. After an entire issue of setting up the X-Corps, facing hypocritical judgment from the X-Men, and seemingly overcoming them, it’s all undercut immediately. Immediately. It’s so goddamn cowardly and unoriginal and boring.
This comic came out a week or two after Adventures of Superman #612, an issue that showed more conviction and courage in the way it didn’t shy away from the ‘Golden Age’ Superman that appeared. A Superman that cared about social justice, not only supervillains. He took on crooked cops, abusive husbands, saved innocent men from death row, and was a reminder that, once upon a time, Superman was much more radical. At the end of the issue, as the fictional ‘Champion of the Oppressed’ is undone, he asks the real Superman to remember him and what he stood for, and the hero says he will. It’s a promise that doesn’t flinch or walk itself back.
The real problem with Uncanny X-Men #395 is that it doesn’t have any juice. Chamber saves a popstar. The X-Men encounter some mutants in the sewers. A bigot tries to kill them all. Compared to what came after Poptopia, this issue feels two-dimensional, like Joe Casey is writing on autopilot, waiting for real inspiration to strike. Throw together some stuff about ‘pop eats itself’ and X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks, and maybe it will add up to something. Squint hard enough and you can find something, I’ll admit. Chamber is the perfect character, meandering through the issue, finding himself in a position for something big and not really trying.
Warp Savant is more appealing as a character. He’s a little shit, but he tries. An 18-year old does something foolish, seeing no real future in anything that Xavier’s crew has to offer. He paints a picture of some essential truth about Casey as he struggled to find his way into a gig that he just fell into. It’s not that he was too good for it or too cool or didn’t even have a problem with the X-Men. If he hated the title, that would have meant something with energy and feeling. Instead, it was sort of a big shrug and a resigned work his way through. Who knows what it was like behind the scenes. Does it matter? We have the comicbooks and the end result is tepid, at best, until half a year in. Do the comics get a lot better? No. But, something changes. There seems to be some nugget of interest and truth in them. What seemed like fumbling around becomes a larger theme...
Do the X-Men understand Warp Savant? No, and he ‘dies.’ Do the X-Men understand the mutants in the sewers? No, and many of them die. Do the X-Men understand the X Ranch? No, but they try a bit harder. Do the X-Men understand the X-Corps? No, and... they’re proven right. Do you see the problem? There’s a progression of the X-Men encountering something outside of their comfort zone, something new, and not knowing what to do with it. And they fail and keep struggling through. Would they have had to agree with Cassidy’s thinking behind the X-Corps? No. It could have been something as simple as a guarded respect without endorsement. Instead, it was evil mutant bullshit, Cassidy getting played, and Grant Morrison taking the name for their own purpose in New X-Men. Pop eats itself, eh?
I’ll give Casey credit. Even though it’s a dagger in my heart, in a way, the direction that the X-Corps story goes, he doesn’t give up. “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose” as it were.
