Tag Archives: X-Men

Aug 7 2013

Uncanny X-Men 9

Alternating Currents: Uncanny X-Men 9, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Uncanny X-Men 9, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Drew: Earlier this year, I became addicted to Radiolab, NPR’s quirky show about science and the philosophical repercussions of that science. The show is fascinating, but is also maddeningly self-referential — the hosts will often refer to massive concepts and conclusions from episodes that aired years before. The one that has come up the most often is the idea that your sense of self — the thing that makes you you — is basically the story you tell yourself about your life. That is to say, it isn’t how you look, how you spend your time, what you value, or even the company you keep — what you are is the narrative you believe about your life. Uncanny X-Men 9 finds Brian Michael Bendis examining every single one of his theories, as our new mutants (and a few old ones) struggle to get a handle on their own identities. Continue reading →

Aug 7 2013

X-Men 3

x-men 3

Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing X-Men 3, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Shelby: I hate a story that drags on too long. As a creator, it’s important to be able to edit yourself; you have to know where you want a story to go and be able to recognize when it gets there. At the same time, it’s just as frustrating as a reader when the story feels rushed. If I’ve settled in to savor a story as it unfolds, a sudden, “…andthenthegoodguyswinordidtheytheend,” is incredibly unsatisfying. A full-stop, wrap-it-up conclusion to a story arc just leaves me feeling confused, like maybe I missed an issue or something. As excited as I have been for Brian Wood’s X-Men, the end of the first arc has me feeling just that: confused and unsatisfied.
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Jul 24 2013

All-New X-Men 14

all new x-men 14

Today,  Shelby and guest Charles Cress are discussing All-New X-Men 14, originally released July 17th, 2013.

Shelby: The “fake-out” is a pretty effective way to garner suspense, especially in serialized story-telling. It’s one thing to make the audience believe something, and then later in the story reveal something totally different, but when you’ve got a month between installments, that reveal is a lot more powerful. It gives the illusion more time to set in the reader’s mind as the reality of the story. Just as serialized media can increase the rewards of the fake-out for the reader, so also does it increase the risk of  reader disappointment. It’s up to the author to make an anti-climactic “just kidding!” reveal meaningful enough for the character to keep the reader from feeling unfairly tricked. Considering he’s using fake-out reveals that literally involve illusions and tricks of the mind, Brian Michael Bendis has got himself a long row to hoe with this one.

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Jul 17 2013

Uncanny X-Men 8

uncanny x-men 8

Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Uncanny X-Men 8, originally released June 10th, 2013.

Are there demons? Please no Dormammu please no Dormammu please no Dormammu… Oh, thank God.

-Fabio “Gold Balls” Medina

Patrick: Scott Summers and the New Uncanny X-Men have spent the last three issues stuck in purgatory. I’m being literal, but what the hell – it’s a metaphor too. The fall-out from the Avengers’ battle with the X-Men has left the mutant leadership in ruins, their superpowers in shambles, and even fractured our heroes’ goals. Illyana Rasputina Conquers Purgatory featured some fantastic art; Frazier Irving rendered Dante-level hellscapes marvelously, but the story had started to spiral around obscure minutae of the Marvel world, all personified by Dormammu. Fabio starts the issue basically praying to be done with Dormammu – when he opens his eyes to see a familiar sight, home, his relief is our relief. The X-Men are back where they belong. Continue reading →

Jul 3 2013

X-Men 2

x-men 2

Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Matt are discussing X-Men 2, originally released June 26th, 2013.

Patrick: Until you see it in action, a movie-monster isn’t that scary. You can hear whisperings about the monster’s insatiable appetite, and come across the ruins of the encampment that it has savaged, but it doesn’t really mean anything until you see the Alien burst violently out of your buddy’s chest. Remember how Scream started? With the killer toying with and brutally murdering the biggest name on the marquee. Whatever else was going to happen from that point forward, the audience knows the killer means business. Last month, we got an abstraction of a conflict – a storied shitty history between cosmic siblings. Faster than we can really deal with it, the conflict is in our laps, and everyone gets a good look at what Arkea can do. Consider me convinced: she’s a problem – one X-Men might not be up to solving. Continue reading →

May 31 2013

X-Men 1

Alternating Currents: X-Men 1, Drew and Spencer

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing X-Men 1, originally released May 29th, 2013.

Drew: Anticipation is often the enemy of objectivity. Not that I can ever claim to be all that objective, but it can be difficult to evaluate a work on its own merits when expectations have been allowed to brew for as long as they have for X-Men 1. Since the announcement of this title, the all-female cast has been cited for everything from pandering to its female audience to serving as a rare bastion of female role models in comicdom. But, are any of those things what writer Brian Wood and penciller Olivier Coipel actually set out to do? Does that matter? Art shouldn’t have to answer for what people turn it into sight-unseen, but its difficult to talk about this series without some reaction to the expectations it was released into. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tie it back to the series itself. Continue reading →

May 28 2013

Uncanny X-Men 6

uncanny x-men 6Today, Ethan and Drew are discussing Uncanny X-Men 6, originally released May 22nd 2013.

Ethan: One evening in college, I was getting ready to turn in a paper that was due the next day. It was all written & polished, so I was just going to skim it one last time and make sure there weren’t any glaring issues. As the file loaded, Word showed a popup window, which I dismissed without reading in the same way you click “I agree” at the bottom of Terms & Conditions. Computers are always showing popup messages, right? They’re usually redundant, whatever. The first page of my paper rendered as a solid mass of gibberish: letters, numbers, and symbols smashed together without spaces… as did the rest of it. 15 pages of junk characters. Alarmed, I closed the file without saving & re-opened it; it turns out that the popup window was warning me that the file was corrupted. As I sat there, in the fading light of the last day before I had to turn this thing in, I thought about what it would take to reproduce the paper from scratch: all the quotes, analysis, and dozens of footnotes containing the specific page references. All of which didn’t exist anywhere else, neither as a hard copy nor digital. While I knew I could pull it together again given some time, in that moment I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out how I was going to make the situation work. While writing a paper isn’t quite the same thing as fighting a giant, fireball-headed master of a hell-dimension, the characters in Brian Michael Bendis’s Uncanny X-Men 6 are definitely up the creek without a paddle (OR MLA-formatted citations).

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Apr 30 2013

Uncanny X-Men 5

uncanny x-men 5

Today, Ethan and Patrick are discussing Uncanny X-Men 5, originally released April 24th 2013.

Ethan: Each of us has at least two definitions of self – the one we show to the world, and the one we identify as our true self. The external definition — the mask — is usually a tool we use to fit in. Perhaps your mask is funnier than you believe the “real” you truly is, or more confident, or more flippant, or more compassionate. Some of us may present a version of ourselves that is not too different than the one we believe to be true; others of us may show a face that’s more dramatically different than our internal, hidden one. Whatever the distance between the public and private self, whatever qualities you infuse into this living theater of personality, you — and only you — can fully plumb the difference. That is of course, assuming that you know who the “true” you is. In Uncanny X-Men #5, Brian Michael Bendis begins to peel back the figurative and literal masks worn by Magik, reminding us of her past and exploring the present condition of the rebel mutants.

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Apr 11 2013

Uncanny X-Men 4

Alternating Currents: Uncanny X-Men 4, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Uncanny X-Men 4, originally released April 10th 2013.

Drew: Writers love exploring different vantage points on the same scene. In fact, they loved it so much, they named it: the Roshomon Effect, for the film that made the conceit famous. Its mix of repetition and change is a potent one, so its use often comes off as gimmicky, but when pulled off well, it can add immense insight into a character’s subjective experience of the world. In Uncanny X-Men 4, Brian Michael Bendis reexamines Cyclops’ pitch from All-New X-Men 10, giving us a rare glimpse into Emma Frost’s mind. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2013

Uncanny X-Men 1-3

uncanny x-men 1-3Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Uncanny X-Men 1-3, originally released February 13th, February 27th, and March 13th 2012, respectively.

Patrick: The X-Men are the perpetual outsiders. They’re different — that’s their whole shtick. Sometimes the X-Men don’t even get along with the X-Men. With Uncanny X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis doubles down on this outsiderness, pitting Cyclops’ band of merry mutants against every one — the government, the Avengers, the rest of the X-Men. It’s the rumblings of a truly unnerving mutant revolution.

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