Celebrity posers, a famous mortality rate, and mutant satire: X-Statix, by Milligan and Allred

-
Media manipulation, morally ambiguous celebrities, and white-hot death: when Brit Peter Milligan, who first followed Alan Moore on UK's Marvel Man, and later wrote challenging comics like Shade, The Changing Man, teamed up with day-glo retro indie artists Mike and Laura Allred to create a new X-Force title, they merged marketing cynicism into a story about a group of media-approved superheroes. I reviewed this on Goodreads, after devouring nearly the entire forty issue run in two days. Funny follow-up to Shakespearean plays, but obviously, I enjoyed it.
They're naked for religious reasons. I'll leave it to you to check out X-Statix #24. I can say, don't be taken in by Spider-Man's cover appearances: he was routinely abused by the new creators at Marvel who used him for money-making cameos.
X-Statix #1-12 really blew me away, especially U Go Girl's diary as read by Venus. I was reminded how brutal the road to fame was, even before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to even more corporate domination. This was the point where I went back to read U-Go Girl's appearances. She was not trying to be likeable, by her own account, but 'adored from afar...maybe envied.' Myles, with his lines inspired by American Lit studies, doesn't stand out much otherwise as The Vivisector (a clawing werewolf), but he and Phat experiment with the idea of letting the media think they're gay, to rather intriguing consequences. He has some nice lines-pretentious, if you will, but insightful. You go from not exactly liking anyone, to admiring some stand each makes. The back-and-forth between The Anarchist (the book begins with his induction) and his new 'blacker, younger, meaner' teammate, The Spike, is uncomfortable and really terrific! Things elevate beyond rhetoric, and in the field, our heroes must put up, or shut up.
If you're on a budget and want to read a sophisticated, often-hilarious, perpetually-awkward X-Tale, the X-Force part of the run is most recommended, and I frankly loved and couldn't predict what characters would do- not even the most-well-intentioned member, Guy Smith, aka Mr. Sensitive/ The Orphan- over the first year of X-Statix. From the Omnibus and Full Collections:
I went back, after reading X-Statix #1-12, to find the issues I'd missed with Paco; satisfying action story, with a good central paradox, about a little boy with a secret which could save the world, at the cost of his own life. It's wild, pairing the Allreds' style, and Darwyn Cooke, to depict morally ambiguous 'heroes.' I tried to read 'Back From the Dead' with its original intent, but I did find it less engaging. X-Statix stands as a precursor to, but not as blackly-cynical as, The Boys by Garth Ennis. In 2001, if all you knew was the X-Men movie, this was a much-more adult take on Marvel's mutants.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition- this day, 1985!

-
Image
Thirty three years ago, today! (That is, August 27th, 1985) Oh, the stories these opened up for me. Alphabetically, fans could find every character still living who'd made at least three appearances, as well as many brand new lights. Origins, major life events, stories from twenty-five years of great Marvel continuity. You could even find out how tall, how heavy, or what color eyes the character should have, which sort of personalizes them and makes them all the more easy to imagine. You could find some description of every single power a character has, and often, see an Eliot R. Brown- illustrated blueprint for their best known weapons, vehicles, and acoutrement. But what could ever be more fuel for debate than : STrength Level! I was eleven when the series started, so of course I still found this part cool and interesting. Fans have been debating the strength levels of their favorite heroes and villains since comics began, so here was the sometimes controversial but ...
Read more

Eminem's Rap God sample: that's Captain America and the Falcon, from Power Records!

-
Image
What do Eminem and most Integr8d Fix readers have in common? Comic books, man. As a boy, I had two Power Records, a brand that released dramatized versions of comic books on 45 rpm, complete with a book sampling most of the comic's artwork. The first was a stand-alone Superman adventure I think was written by Elliot S! Maggin, where aliens fell to earth in the form of silver-hued bullets. The second one, I only had the record, but it was intense: Captain America and the Falcon confront the mystery of The Phoenix, a man whose thirst for revenge is born from Cap's battles in the world war before his frozen suspension. I didn't get hooked on Eminem's 2013 release "Rap God" until I was putting together a hip hop playlist this September. Not unlike when Anj and I discovered Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre back in college, I was wrestling with an angry mood over someone who cheated me of recording time after I gave up eleven Sundays of my life to give...his initials ...
Read more

Lost World of Apes: the Bili and Mangani

-
Image
Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani (meaning "great-ape") is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied (with modifications) to humans. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan. Dr. Peter Coogan wrote a page on the synthetic language created for the Mangani and Tarzan, provided here in pdf: http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Mangani.pdf The language of the great apes of Africa that Edgar Rice Burroughs depicts in the Tarzan novels is not some simple, made-up collection of sounds substituting for English. It is a representation of a deeply structured, complex linguistic sign system with a grammar and syntax of its own. This grammar has never been worked out because its last living native speakers (with the exception of Tarzan himself) went extinct in the last century. Unfor...
Read more