Subject: Even "The Sound of Music" couldn't stop this one...

Posted by: Shadowcrab at 01/29/00 23:07

Just when I thought the powers that be were going to stop this Porklips nonsense, Wizard says--oh, hellacious on a Trisket, do we need a SPOILER ALERT!!! for this?--that Mar-bell is thinking about letting the Blue Meanie trickle through X-land again in the fall. Oh, fffflap.

Well, we (the royal "we," if no one else) can always enjoy another Apocal-lisp in the meantime. This week's victims--mmm, "foci of review"--are the Wolverine and adjective-free X-People 'pocal-books. (Haven't a clue what numbers they are. Hundred an' forty-something; ninety-something. The ones on the rack on Wednesday the twenty-sixth. You know: the Fantastic Faux and the Dentures Brigade.) Let's gore Wolverine first:

Orangey. Orrrangey. Orangey, orangey, orangey. ORRorrORRorrORANGEY. [Hell. Can't get past the RantRepulsor logo. Literally cannot open the book. TOO. MUCH. ORANGE. SO--ORANGEY. George, can we see the rabbits now, George?]

Right, then. On to (but not, under the Comics Code, onto) the X-People. (Jeez, what a cruddy week to decide to become a Kinder, Gentler Shadowcrab.) Err, uh--trying hard to play by the "If you can't say anything nice" rule here, but being, by gum, the human crustacean who lives by the motto "She's writing and she can't shut up," it's kinda lipsplitting, to say the least--WHAT?!? Is Davis drawing with his drafting board absolutely flat? Did he just get bifocals? Everyone (except for Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Du--crap! gotta be nice--Beast and Colossus) looks like they're being event-horizoned, or taffy-pulled, or vertically Cinemascoped. Likely just an act of kindness on his part (thinks the KGSC): this way, he'll be harder to miss when the yingsters take over [except for Leinil Francis Yu. He's ducky. There: the KGSC has said something both K and G.] Either that, or he was still drawing as Marvel was explaining to him for the last time the location of the door marked EXIT. Either that, or someone suckered him into a wager: "Hey, Alan! I know you're winding up for your X-world swan-song an' all, but I betcha can't draw a whole book in twenty-eight minutes! I know [the KGSC refuses to fill in the names of any random wet-behind-the-ears seemingly visually impaired and/or nepotistically named Marvel yingster artists here, as to do so would be neither kind nor gentle] could!" Guess we'll just have to settle for the Standard Apocalypse Checklist:

Some eighty pages of epic melodrama crammed into eighteen pages? Check. Spiderman "Got Crack" ad space unviolated? Check. Professor X in Colossus' steely arms, looking poignantly at his [but not his and Colossus'] Chillun' o' de Atom? Check. [And why he and Colossus couldn't have had kids in this story--aside from the obvious but relatively minor biological snags--Hell! They could adopt!--is beyond me, as every other X-critter in sight appears to have been sprogging with abandon (okay, okay, and with each other, and with cheese and clams and potted plants and anything else too slow to get away). But--X-Sprogs. I like it. Call someone at the Marvel Ministry of Plot(z). A title like that needs a book....] Itty bitty story circlet (in keeping with corporate budgetary restrictions and assumed ten-second attention spans of loyal readers)? Check. Randomly generated alterno-maybe-kinda-might-be-we're-not-just-a-bunch-of-big-flaming-teases-here-at-Mar vel-really-we're-not future plot-blips? Check and check again. Okay. I mean, o-kay. This was a hell of a good Apocalypse book. (And I have a lovely mid-Manhattan tract of land I'm auctioning off on eBay, too. Go check it out. It has a beautiful bridge spanning the East River to Brooklyn....) Orrrangey. Orrrangey....

One more thing: In March, can we call them the "Ex-X-Men"? The "Ex-Ex-X-Men" in April (or mid-March, assuming standard plot compression techniques are in place at Marvel), when their powers come back...?

A particularly gory example of what happens when the manic-depressive thing swings from "d" back to "m." Blame it on "The Sound of Music." [LASERDISCS ROCK!!! WAH-HAA!!!] Or, if that's too stomach-churning to contemplate, blame it on Eelay. [Hey, Lee, clever how the KGSC used her ancient knowledge of Pig Latin to disguise your name, huh? Oops.]

Was going to sign off with "Throw yourself to me/And I'll try to pull you free," but all I keep thinking is "Raindrops on roses/And whiskers on kittens." Pray for the downswing....

Shadowcrab