Blogathon 31: Uncanny X-Force (Part 2)

Kaitlin makes a pretty decent argument for why Uncanny X-Force is good. I guess my problem is that not connecting to any of the characters, in particular, Psylocke, much of it is lost on me. But, I covered that. Now I will attempt to tell you what I like about Uncanny X-Force and, maybe, talk myself into buying the final two trades...

* I genuinely enjoy the way Rick Remender writes Deadpool. He's not funny, but he's unhinged and tries to be funny. A character like Deadpool shouldn't be funny. He's too weird for that. Remender gets that.

* Evan was raised to be Superman.

* The art. Sometimes. But, I also think that I've passed by the rough patch (aka "The Dark Angel Saga" book one).

* Wolverine talking to Psylocke about killing folks.

* The way it ties in with Secret Avengers.

* The Final Four Horsemen.

* The idea of returning to the Age of Apocalypse and how it led to that comic. I like that comic.

* Seriously, Jerome Opena and Dean White!

* I like Remender's ambition. He doesn't think small. He thinks big. And he tries to make the characters matter. He simply falls into the bad habit of telling us things matter.

* Okay, I liked the art in the "Otherworld" story... it was me!

* That there's an end point.

In 30 minutes, Ryan K. Lindsay and I begin discussing the issue of maintaining monthly quality.

We're up to $960 raised!

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]

Blogathon 30: Uncanny X-Force (Kaitlin Tremblay Guest Post)

Right from the get-go, Uncanny X-Force had everything I loved: a team of hired guns, which included Psylocke and Deadpool, taking care of dirty work incognito. And it was this team, and Remender's ability to create an ensemble cast where no character felt tacked on or left out, that ultimately hooked me. Each member brought their own unique strength and provided something to the story nobody else could -- whether it was Pyslocke’s compassion/telekenesis holding the team together, Logan’s battle-weary wisdom leading them on, Deadpool’s sheer insanity saving them from situations a sane man would run from, Angel’s psychosis testing their limits and Fantomex’s bravado threatening to break them apart. They worked as a team and moved as a team, and even when the story got a little too wacky -- which, oh boy, it did -- watching X-Force play together was always worth the read.

Despite all that, ultimately, Uncanny X-Force reads more as Pyslocke’s, or at least the Psylocke we’ve known so far, swan song -- a sort death with the ultimate hope of a rebirth for Betsy Braddock. We start off with a fairly recognizable, traditional, none-too-complicated Betsy: her unapologetic ass-kicking and her loving relationship with Warren. After The Dark Angel Saga, Betsy undergoes a series of events that are ultimately about redefining her: her mind becomes shattered; emotionally, she becomes wiped clean; she severs her relationship with her brothers and family in Otherworld; she sees a future version of herself as a Minority Report-esque fascist leader, killing people before they can commit murder in a world ruined by Apocalypse; she tries to kill herself to prevent this future; and after all of it, her mind becomes potentially irrevocably shattered in the final battle to prevent Evan from turning into the evil Apocalypse Take Two.

Everything contained within Uncanny X-Force is a steady loss of what is important to her, and her frenzied, chaotic and disastrous attempts to reconcile these events with her life. She gives up her ability to feel in order save Fantomex after killing her brother. After the horrid experiences with Angel, this is the next big step in her downward spiral. So much of Uncanny X-Force is Betsy fighting and jumping between extremes of what she feels is right and what she feels she needs to do. At the end of issue 28, when she sees herself in the future, she justifies her suicide attempt by saying "If I am the woman who brings this all about -- I'll kill her before she can." Her disassociation from herself in this scene points to the splitting that has occurred within her mind: there is the Psylocke she sees she will become, and the Psylocke she currently is, and both are wedged into her body in this moment, a moment that has been building for the entirety of the Uncanny X-Force run.

Betsy is steadily losing everyone and everything. She loses Jamie, and because of that, she also loses Otherworld. She loses Warren, she loses Fantomex. She loses her ability to feel, her ability to think properly in her own mind. By the end of issue 36, she even loses the ability to tell what is real and what is fantasy, as Fantomex points out to her on the final page. But the crucial part of this loss and descent is that it is paving the way for a creation of a new Psylocke. Uncanny X-Force ends with Betsy's assertion that, even if this is all in her head a la a Nolan movie, then at least she's going to take control and make it something meaningful for herself.

Ultimately, then, I would say Uncanny X-Force is the stage where Betsy Braddock’s life and identity plays out like a tragedy in order to take Psylocke’s character in a newer direction.  With the MarvelNOW! Uncanny X-Force run beginning including Spiral, the character who forged Betsy’s mind into Kwannon’s body, all signs appear to point to a refiguring of Betsy’s identity and characterization.

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]

Blogathon 29: Uncanny X-Force (Part 1)

I have read the first five trades of Uncanny X-Force and I really dug the first one. Since then, it's been a progressive slide. I still enjoyed the fifth trade, but there's no hint of the overwhelming love that others seem to have for the book. It's a little hard not to react against that love, to simply look at the book on its own terms.

It's a comic that had some amazing art in the first arc, went through various degrees of lesser art, and, then, briefly had that amazing art return three trades later. I can appreciate the story that Rick Remender was trying to tell. The failing of the group to recognise the danger their teammate posed despite seemingly recognising it. Their inability to see that their job was to protect the world from the likes Apocalypse and, when, one of their own accomplished that goal under horrible circumstances, to see that it was needed. Of course, the conceipt that the core of Apocalypse is simply passed on is a fairly... dumb one. Once you're aware of that, you don't kill anyone. You simply contain and restrain. You would think...

Part of my issue is that there's nothing for me to latch onto in this title. The closest thing I had was when the Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler joined the team. That created an interesting dynamic as the members of the team struggled with this man who was so much like this lost friend, but clearly wasn't him -- and made that as clear as possible as much as possible.

The biggest letdown was "The Dark Angel Saga." Half of which was utter rubbish. A lame detour that didn't honestly add a lot before jumping into a story that didn't have the necessary oomph. If you weren't invested in the Psylocke/Angel relationship, a lot of what happens doesn't land. I don't think that Remender did a lot to actually make that relationship something worth caring about. He talked about it a lot in the comic, yeah. But showing? There were some early scenes that made it clear that it was a fairly poor relationship between a delusional ninja telepath and a man losing a battle with himself. It was doomed from the getgo in this comic and we're supposed to pretend that it matters? That it's important or tragic? If anything, it was the logical conclusion of the foreshadowing in the first arc.

Something I never quite got is the moral quandries at the centre of this book all too often. It's a wetwork team put together to do dirty jobs... yet, so much of the time was spent working against that idea. It's strange to have a comic where the characters fight so hard against the premise that they set out. Instead of those moments acting as an exploration of what this sort of violence and killing means, it made the characters look weak and uncertain in their situation. That's not compelling, particularly when it's all of them. It's one thing to avoid killing and questioning your chosen life after the fact... but to contantly talk around the idea like they do...

Sorry. I know how much Kaitlin likes this book and wanted to immediately set up the contrast, especially when I stand by everything I said. It's just not everything I think. Yet.

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]