New X Men Vol 2
Sixteen million mutants dead - and that was just the beginning! In one bold stroke, writer Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, Batman) propelled the X-Men into the 21st century, masterminding a challenging new direction for Marvel’s mutant heroes that began with the destruction of Genosha and never let up. Regarded as the most innovative thinker of the current comic-book renaissance, Morrison proceeded to turn the mutant-hero genre on its ear. Gone were the gaudy spandex costumes - replaced by slick, black leather and an attitude to match. Now, his entire Eisner Award-nominated run on New X-Men is collected across three titanic trade paperbacks! Collects New X-Men #127-141.
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars what a mess
From start to finish, New X-men: Imperial is overly ambitious and overly melodramatic. The themes, for the most part, are the same tried ideas of tolerance and prejudice. All X-men comics revolve around these same ideas, but the hard part is putting a new spin on them, and unfortunately their use in Imperial felt stale, generic, and overblown.
Imperial (New X-men #118-#126) continues the saga of the struggle against Cassandra Nova, an immensely powerful being who has hijacked Xavier’s body, trapped his mind, and then left to sabotage the Shi-ar empire. Meanwhile, the X-men must deal with an organization that is harvesting mutants for their organs and face increasing public scrutiny since Xavier revealed his mutant identity.
The outcome and revelation of Cassandra, her identity, her past, and eventually her defeat, came off as very B-movie-ish. There was a barrage of newer characters, and although I had read volume 1 (E is for extinction), they didn’t seem adequatly explained, making me wonder if I was supposed to read another series in conjunction.
The weak plot would be acceptable, were it not for the bizarre art that accompanies it. I respect the editors for trying to lend diversity to X-men’s looks by bringing in different artists, but the end-result is just not very pleasing in Imperial. X-mens’ faces are so dowsed in character lines that they are downright ugly and deformed at times, and their faces completely change appearance from frame to frame.
The final blow is that the layout of the action in the frames is so cluttered that I had no idea what was going on most of the time. I had to repeatedly examine some frames to try to figure out what was trying to be conveyed. Is that Wolverine or Beast? Is that supposed to be a head? What just happened here?
I have been trying to get into the newer incarnations of our favourite gene-freaks. I must confess that I really don’t care for the general direction in the New X-men series. I don’t like their costumes, I don’t like their “second-mutations,” and I’m not even a big fan of the roster in New X-men. But it’s not that I’m just a stubborn old fart who refuses to accept change. I had vastly enjoyed the Uncanny X-men novels (circa issue #400), but I can’t say the same about New X-men Imperial.
5 Stars Morrison’s Run Continues To Impress, But…
The first volume of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men was very good. Though it isn’t the best X-Men book around (go read Astonishing!), it had a great story, introduced a powerful new villain, and found a new way to show how mutants can be persecuted. Imperial directly continues the events of E if for Extinction, with Prof. Xavier leaving Earth to contact the Shi’ar after revealing to the media that he’s really a mutant and his school for the gifted means a school for mutants. Unable to understand why he would do such a thing, the X-Men, who include Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine, and Emma Frost, are left to deal with the protestors who are outside the school. If that weren’t bad enough, a creepy cult has surfaced. They are humans who desire to be mutants, so they harvest mutant organs in order to implant in their own bodies to give themselves superpowers. While dealing with these crises, the entire X-team finds themselves coming down with a mysterious flu, and, eventually, they begin to wonder if the threat posed by Cassandra Nova is really as finished as they thought.
In addition to the X-Men, some more of the studnets are featured. Emma Frost’s new protoges, the Stepford Cuckoos, are introduced in this trade, Beak gets a part to play, and a new character, a girl with some physiology reminiscent of a fly, is brought to the school after she is thrown out of her house. All of these characters contribute to the story at some point, and it seems that Morrison is setting them up for bigger things to come.
Imperial is definitely good and is a worthy read, but there are a few things that I must say. It seemed like there was almost too much going on to keep track of. There were numerous plots interwoven in these issues, which isn’t a problem as long as the reader can keep them straight. I had a somewhat hard time remembering who was involved in which story. Still, this is a good read for any X-Men fan.
3 Stars Graphic SF Reader
Haven’t read much later X-Men, so a little bit lost for some of this. Have to revisit it at a later date. It was not too bad, and had Jean Grey (yes, in one of her lives) still alive and front and centre, leading the band. If you don’t like Frank Quitely’s art, do avoid this, as it is very in your face here.
5 Stars The X-Men take their new mission global
Grant Morrison’s revolutionary take on the X-Men continues here. Fresh from his encounter with Cassandra Nova, Prof. X decides to take his mutant vision global. With Jean Grey in tow, Xavier tours France, Great Britain, India, and the ruins of Genosha, visiting each of his brand new high-tech X-Corp locations. X-Corp, a global corporation devoted to protecting mutants and advancing mutant rights worldwide, is probably the freshest idea to hit the X-books in some time. With all of his money and resources, it’s about time Xavier started to spread the wealth.
After facing down the evil Weapon Plus Program’s latest mutant killing machine and burying one of their own, the X-Men must face a threat at home in the form of a band of rebellious mutant students of the Xavier Institute called the Omega Gang. Morrison deftly uses the Omega Gang to show how Xavier’s dream of human-mutant co-existence needs to be adapted for the younger generation.
It is in this volume that Morrison begins the controversial psychic affair between Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men, and Emma Frost, a former villain and a skilled seductress. Feeling inadequate ever since he was possessed by the evil spirit of Apocalypse, Cyclops feels he cannot share his darker feelings with Jean and turns to the arms of Emma Frost, who just wants to play a little with stoic Scott Summers.
Certainly controversial, undenibaly revolutionary, Morrison’s New X-Men never disappoints.
4 Stars Great storytelling, but inconsistent art
New X-Men Ultimate Collection Volume 2 is an excellent set of X-Men stories told by Grant Morrison. If you haven’t read Volume 1, I suggest that you do so since this is a direct continuation.
Overall, Volume 2 is very good, however it’s not quite as good as Volume 1. There’s a number of interesting stories and some very good character arcs to make this volume worth owning, but the book suffers from a central focus that the first volume had. The first volume was really all about Cassandra Nova, the killing of millions of mutants. There was subplots dealing with the U-Men. It was pretty tight, and so Volume 1 read like one single story.
Volume 2 is nothing like this. This book is really a large collection of smaller stories. Some stories are just 1 issue long. Other are 3 issues long. None of them really string together well though, and could almost be told in any order.
One confusing bit that I found was that the stories often went from locale to locale - like Mutant Town to France to India to Pakistan to New York - which create a lack of overall cohesion. There wasn’t a whole lot of connection between the stories, like actually showing the X-Men travel from location to location.
Even within the story, there are some setting problems. Sometimes as you go on to next page, it’s not clear what’s going on or where it’s happening. Sometimes the dialog doesn’t string together naturally either, where characters throw in a one-liner here and there out of context… or the conversations and story doesn’t flow well from page to page. If you like Brian Michael Bendis’ natural character dialog and are used to that, then some of the writing will be hard to follow. This just creates a weird flow in my opinion.
Many stories switch the cast of characters drastically too, and after their story is done, those characters are never to be seen again. I think Grant did a better job in Volume 1.
Still, some of the stories hear are quite excellent. It’s easy enough to enjoy them despite all the faults. At the time, most of the X-books were very bad, so Grant’s work, even though not his best, really stood out.
The last fault I’d like to mention is the art - there are a total of 6 artists featured in this book, and Frant Quitely (the main artist) only draws a few of the issues. Maybe this works as a monthly book, but it just downright looks weird seeing a different art style every 30 pages.
The art by John Paul Leon is not very good in my opinion. It lacks detail, and everything looks blocky. It may work in other comics genres to certain people’s tastes, but it doesn’t work for a super-hero team book. It certainly won’t be pleasing to look at for most people.
Igor Kordey also makes a return, who is another artist I absolutely do not like. He always manages to make characters look extremely different than they are supposed to. Just like the first volume, Igor presents some of the worst art in the book.
While the other artists are certainly different in style, at least they look good and suit the genre. I think the book would have worked if the two mentioned artists did not participate. As it stands, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that 6 artists were needed to draw the art of X-Men’s flagship title. Marvel should really be blamed for not being able to hire and secure the same artist for a top 10 title at the time.
Overall, Volume 2 is a very good book. It’s not quite as good as Volume 1, but surely if you like the X-Men, it’s worth owning. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Filed under: Comic Book Reviews