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Hugh Likes Comics: Sins of Sinister #1

January 30, 2023

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Sins of Sinister #1
Written by Kieron Gillen
Drawn by Various Artists
Colored by Bryan Valenza
Lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles
Published by Marvel Comics

The Skinny: Speed-running into a dark timeline
Ever since the X-Men’s soft reboot into the current era with 2019’s House of X/Powers of X, the heroes have had a problem. It was never a question of if evil eugenicist Mister Sinister was going to betray them, but how. While he’s been sitting on the ruling council and biding his time, his plans have accelerated since the start of Gillen’s Imortal X-Men.
Sins of Sinister #1 is the wig reveal for the diabolical mastermind’s ten-year plan, serving as a sort of a speed-run start to the event. Sinister isn’t one person, more of a system of clones, and he’s secretly corrupted the Quiet Council in order to bring about his larger goal of turning the entire Earth into a Mister Sinister hive-mind. The result is that this is less of a kick-off and more of a guided tour of ten years of a Marvel Comics history that is likely to be completely undone at the end of the event.
Gillen has put all his cards on the table for this event. By leaning into the fact that this won’t be the status quo going forward, he gets to take bigger swings with the story. The event is spaced out in powers of ten, with the first books set ten years after Sinister’s takeover, then one hundred, and finally a thousand years into the future. This unique structure is a lot of fun, and this volume gives us a whole lot of cool splash pages and hypothetical events as the corrupted X-Men help take over the world. Sometimes it’s fun to watch the bad guys win.
With a huge number of artists drawing the book, the art varies, but it’s all good, and Bryan Valenza’s colors tie the different sections together. The book has a dark palate, which fits the sci-fi dystopia that Sinister is trying to bring about.
Sins of Sinister #1 is less a puzzle box and more of a explainer video of a comic, a wig reveal of machinations that have been threaded through the last four years of comics. It’s a lot of fun, but I’m most looking forward to the individual books, and seeing how the unusual structure for the event plays out. You can pick up a copy for yourself at the usual digital retailers, and from your local Comics Shop.

Hugh Likes Comics: A.X.E. Judgement Day

August 1, 2022

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Written by Keiron Gillen
Drawn by Valerio Schiti
Colored by Marte Gracia
Lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles
Published by Marvel Comics

The Skinny: Marvel’s big crossover event for the summer dives deep into Superhero Politics

Spinning out of The Eternals and Destiny of X, Guillen and Schiti deliver the opening salvo in a summer event comic that promises to be a bit more than your typical hero vs. hero slugfest. Because this isn’t just a book about superheroes. It’s a book about superhero international relations.
 The Mutant Nation of Krakoa continues to dominate the world stage by doing the impossible. After terraforming and colonizing Mars last year, the secret of their ability to resurrect dead mutants has become public knowledge. The fact that they are unable to bring back humans has led to a public backlash and mistrust.
 Meanwhile, the Eternals have been facing some societal shake-ups of their own. The tumult has left scheming Druig in charge as the Prime Eternal, and many of the other immortal heroes unsure of their purpose after being abandoned by their creators, the Celestials.
 Oh, also the Avengers are using the hollowed-out corpse of a dead celestial as their new base. For reasons.
 With Druig on shaky political footing, he comes up with a plan to unify his people and secure his power by convincing them that the Mutants are byproducts of their ancient enemies, the also Celestial-created Deviants, and thus they must be eradicated. Not unfamiliar with attempted genocide against them, the Mutants on Krakoa fend off the assault. The ones on Mars aren’t so lucky. As Druig moves through more and more of his fantastical arsenal of ancient Celestial technology to use against Mutantkind, sides are chosen. But who wins in a war where both sides are effectively immortal? And will anyone else still be standing when the dust settles?
 Obviously, the answer here is going to be ‘yes’ because this is a superhero comic, but I am enjoying the way this event is spinning out less from Action-movie cliches of previous events and the more cerebral moments from Eternals and Immortal X-Men. The first issue is mostly scene setting and getting the characters where they need to be, but it’s still a strong first issue, with great writing by Gillen. The scene between Druig and Moira X, and the whole thing with the protesters (no spoilers) is just chilling.
 Schiti and Gracia’s art is excellent. I love the opening pages, which juxtapose Iron Man and Sersi having brunch against the human protesters surrounding the X-Men’s treehouse headquarters. The colors are rich and the characters are all expressive and dynamic. This feels more like a political thriller than a superhero dustup, and the art sells it when the pages are mostly talking heads.
 A.X.E. Judgement Day #1 is now available in print from your local comics shop or digitally from the usual sources.  

Hugh Likes Comics: Immortal X-Men

April 5, 2022

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Immortal X-Men #1
Written by Kieran Gillen
Drawn by Lucas Werneck
Colored by David Curiel
Lettered by Clayton Cowles
Design by Tom Muller
Published by Marvel Comics

The Skinny: The X-Wing
The next ‘season’ of X-Men comics kicks off with this banger of a book focusing on the Quiet Council, the ruling body of the Mutant Nation of Krakoa. And while this book is a who’s who of A-list comics characters, Gillen puts the story in the shoes of his favorite villain, Mr. Sinister.
 As a new number one, Immortal X-Men #1serves as a good jumping-on point for readers who missed the X-Men’s glow up from a boarding school with teachers who shoot lasers from their eyes to international and even interplanetary politics. It reintroduces the status quo and the major players. The council is a mixture of white and black hats, the issue opens with a big one hanging his up. Magneto is stepping down from the council, and most of the issue is spent on the debate over who should replace him.
 It’s a risky move to start a comics story with so little action, but one of the strengths of the X-line has always been the way the books fit together, using varying tones to tell complex stories that appeal to different audiences. X-Force and Excalibur are books in the same line, with very different tones from the ‘core’ X-Men title. And Immortal X-Men is an extension of that idea, a book that focuses on the politics of running the mutant nation. The X-Wing if you will. Gillen pulls it off by focusing on Sinister’s twisted perspective. A supervillain’s supervillain, he plots and schemes and seems to know everybody else’s secrets. Except for Destiny, the precognitive mutant recently back from the dead. The book opens with the two sparring in post-WWI Paris, and a hundred years later, not much has changed.
 The issue is further saved from being a collection of talking heads by Lucas Werneck’s excellent art, which is stuffed not only with gorgeous, expressive characters, but delightful background images as well. The X-Men, and Mr. Sinister in particular, has leaned into its own weirdness in the last decade. Werneck is serving that weirdness up with cool body horror and bizarre monsters. I can’t wait to see what else is up the sleeves of this artist and writer pair.
 If you’re into comics for the fight scenes, this isn’t the book for you, but this book takes the central political conflicts of the X-Men and turns the tension up to eleven. If sci-fi politics is your jam, you owe it to yourself to check out Immortal X-Men. You can find the first issue at your local comics shop or online from Amazon. (R.I.P. Comixology)

Hugh Likes Podcasts: Cerebro

September 18, 2020

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Cerebro
Hosted by Connor Goldsmith
https://www.connorgoldsmith.com/cerebro

The Skinny: What we talk about when we talk about X-Men characters.

If there are two topics I am continually drawn to in my podcast listening, they are Writing and Queer-friendly X-Men content. And while the later is a bit more niche than the former, Cerebro, a new podcast from Literary Agent and X-Men fan Connor Goldsmith is the rare center point in that particular Venn diagram.
Each episode, Connor sits down with a fellow fan and discusses a specific X-Men character from the comics, doing a deep dive on their history, continuity, and retcons. So far he’s covered Psylocke, Nightcrawler, and Emma Frost.
This could be just your run-of-the-mill fancast, but Connor’s impeccable choice of guests elevates the discourse by including writers, editors, and culture critics. The first episode’s guest is Tini Howard, who is currently writing Excalibur. Thus, not only is the podcast a celebration of a character and their publication history, but an examination of the guest’s interpretation of that character and their own work. It was eye-opening to hear a creator’s thoughts on a character she is currently writing in so open and informal a setting.
Cerebro is available from all the usual podcast sources, on Twitter, or from Connor’s Website. I heartily recommend it.

Hugh Likes Comics: Marauders #1

October 28, 2019

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Marauders #1
Written by Gerry Duggan
Drawn by Matteo Lolli
Colored by Federico Blee
Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit
Design by Tom Muller
Published by Marvel Comics

Marauders

The Skinny: X-Men’s big Sci-Fi experiment embraces the New Wave. On a boat.

Marauders #1 is the X-Men book I’ve been waiting for.
The X-Men, right down to their creation as five white teenagers in 1960’s America, has always been a metaphor for oppressed groups. This isn’t a new idea, whether Marvel Editorial admits it or not. But with House of X, Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz changed tack. The core concept was still there, but Krakoa altered the dynamic and outlook of mutants so it became less of a struggle between them and human oppressors and more of a big, Golden-Age Science Fiction meditation on divergent futures.
But with Marauders #1, at least some corner of the X-line is back on solid New Wave SF ground, and examining the structures of what Krakoa hath wrought, because there’s no such thing as a problem-free utopia. The problem being that not everybody can use the gates to get to the distant island. In some cases, it is because the countries those gates are in have cordoned them off. For Kate, (formerly Kitty) Pride, it’s because Krakoa won’t let her in.
So, along with a crew of Iceman, Storm, and accidentally the original Pyro, she sets to sea in a boat to bring the mutants that want to come to Krakoa but can’f find a way. The result is the usual superhero dustup against a cadre of generic Russian soldier baddies, but the premise has legs to explore the real consequences of the new era. We get to see who’s being left behind, and where the cracks are in Moira and Xavier’s plans. Plus, this looks like the book where we’re going to see all of Emma Frost’s scheming play out, and that was the most interesting part of House of X, in my opinion.
X-Men as a concept always works better for me when it deals with characters rather than concepts. Marauders looks like the book where we’re actually going to see the two intersect in interesting ways. Issue one is out now digitally from Comixology, and in print at your local comics shop. Go check it out.

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Hugh Likes Comics: House of X

July 29, 2019

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House of X #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Drawn by Pepe Larraz
Colored by Marte Garcia
Lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles
Design by Tom Muller
Published by Marvel Comics

The Skinny: Hickman’s first X-Men book is a bold first step. But where exactly is he taking us?

For decades, X-Men comics have been firmly situated in the ‘mutant metaphor,’ the idea that mutants, unjustly hated and feared for their superpowers, corresponded to real-life marginalized and oppressed people. Notable examples include Magneto being a holocaust survivor, and the island of Genosha, an apartheid state which enslaved mutants to provide lives of luxury to their human citizens. Usually, this metaphor brings the reader in and establishes sympathy for the characters. With his first X-Men issue, Jonathan Hickman is doing something completely different.
House of X takes a much more outsider perspective. It barely spends any time at all with familiar heroes, and when it does, there’s something decidedly off about them. They are truly outsiders to the readers in a way that they haven’t been since their inception. The story instead follows a group of Ambassadors taking a tour of a new ‘mutant embassy’ established in Jerusalem. Mutants have unified under Xavier’s banner and established a new nation on the Island of Krakoa, a sentient being that was the villain way back in Giant-Sized X-Men #1. Led by Magento, and assisted by a pair of characters that were previously dead, the humans get a tour of the plant-covered building. The rest of the oversized issue are vignettes and infographics that provide background details but also further establish the otherness of this new Mutant Nation.
Xavier’s motives and endgame are still very much up for interpretation, but the whole thing is decidedly sinister.
Laraz’s art is top-notch, and the graphics, designed by Tom Muller, really add to book and establish the stakes. This is, without a doubt, a well-written, drawn, and executed book. But I worry. For over fifty-five years, the mutants were the good guys, and a direct metaphor for oppressed people. If Hickman is flipping that script, what does that say for the politics of this story, and for the Marvel bullpen in general? Marvel has always made a firm stance on where it stood on oppression, right from the beginning. With the state of the world as it is today, this is exactly the wrong time for them to soften it.
I’m not sure where this book is heading, but I can’t deny that I’m hooked. You can get your own copy from your local comics shop, or digitally through Comixology.

Hugh Likes Comics: X-Men: Grand Design

January 24, 2018

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X-Men: Grand Design #1 & 2

Written and Drawn by Ed Piskor

Published by Marvel Comics

The Skinny: Ed Piskor X-plains the X-Men.

“X-Men: Grand Design” is a comic with a very ambitious goal: Straighten out the tangled history of Marvel’s X-Men, and do it in such a way that it tells a coherent, interesting story. But if anyone is up to the task, it is indie comics creator and the man behind Hip Hop Family Tree, Ed Piskor.

Piskor’s distinctive style feels somewhat strange applied to Jack Kirby’s designs, but the book goes all in, even being printed on a thicker, more rough paper for that truly indie feel. And this book does indeed cover plenty of space, opening in the dawn of the Golden Age and following Charles Xavier through the foundation of the X-Men and their Silver Age adventures. It does a great job of feeling both cosmically important, and personally intimate. There’s so much crazy backstory, retcons, and downright bizarre editorial decision-making in X-Men history that this book exists at all is an accomplishment. That Piskor pulls it off so effectively is a coup.

The first issue really only gets as far as the founding of the team, but it sets a solid continuity in a few simple strokes, and it makes The Phoenix a central figure going back to origin, which is  a good retcon. Issue two covers the team’s Silver Age adventures up until Giant Size X-Men #1, and does a bit more work retconning the original run into a cohesive whole that is appealing to a modern sensibility.

X-Men: Grand Design is available online from Comixology, and in print at Your Local Comics Shop! If you want a crash course, or just would like to see a different take on characters you’ve loved for years, its well worth a look!

Podcast: CCRC8-X-Men TAS S1E1

June 12, 2016

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Watch along as Hugh, JRD, and Opopinax relive their childhoods watching the pilot for the 90’s X-Men: The Animated Series, “Night of the Sentinels Part 1.”

Click HERE to listen.

Click HERE to watch along!

This podcast originally aired at Skinner.FM on June 6, 2016.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it!  You can also support it via Patreon!

Hugh Likes Comics: X-Men: Battle of the Atom

November 1, 2013

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Today’s comic is X-Men, Battle of the Atom, written by Brian Michael Bendis, and drawn by various artists. 2013 is the 50th anniversary of Uncanny X-men, and Marvel is celebrating with a crossover featuring those two most pressing issues to mutant-kind, Time Travel and The Phoenix. In classic X-men style, the story plays out in a bunch of different titles over the course of a couple months, and as of writing, they are about halfway done.

I’m on record as hating crossovers, and this one takes a few of the miss-steps that irk me. Characters are acting against their type, there’s a lot of scenes where people just shout their opinions without doing anything, and characters appear for no other purpose than to be seen and fill out the page. It’s a lot like the American Government Shutdown, actually.

But for all that, I’m surprised to find myself really enjoying the story, and eagerly awaiting the next part. The story is stuffed full of nostalgia and angst, and unites the past, present, and future X-Men. To condense a long story into a single paragraph, after the last catastrophic crossover event, Cyclops has gone rogue, and under the influence of everyone’s favorite cosmic fire bird, killed Professor Xavier. In an attempt to prevent this from happening, his former team-mate Hank McCoy built a time machine and brings the original five teenagers from 1963 to the present and showed them how everything turned out. I don’t know why he didn’t just use the time machine to prevent the murder, but what do I know from storytelling. It turns out that Causality will not be denied, however, and when Teenage Cyclops is nearly killed, everyone realizes that doing this stupid thing might have been a mistake. But just as everyone is about to send the five kids home to prevent something horrible from happening, a DIFFERENT set of time travelers appear: X-men from the future who have come to make sure the Original Five-man band all go back home. Much shouting, angst, and fighting for no reason ensues, and in the confusion, Teenage Jean Grey and Cyclops escape. Seeing how their future worked out for them, they are inclined to stay in the present, even if it means more trouble down the road.

It’s difficult to say what makes this story work exactly. It has a lot of moving parts, not all of which seem to be on the same track, but the story is crazy enough at this point that literally anything can happen. The stakes are as high as they can be in a comic-book universe, and these characters have been struggling against each other, to say nothing of the Marvel Universe villains, for so long, that I’m really cheering for them to catch a break. The visions of the future, including a version of Jean Grey in Xorn armor (Xorn was a character from the late-90’s/early 2000’s X-men who dressed in armor covered in chains and wore a skull-mask. He ended up being a bad guy, go figure) and an Iron Man armor painted up in Sentinel colors with an X across it’s chest plate, are both cool and tantalizing. I haven’t been keeping a close eye on the X-books, but the comics gave me enough back-story when I needed it, and I wasn’t lost.  Also, Jubilee is both a teenage mother and a vampire, but I don’t think it’s a vampire baby.  I’m probably going to go into back issues and find out how that happened, because someone has done the impossible and made Jubilee a character I want to see more of.

This is a crossover that really seems like it’s trying to move forward while still hitting the high notes of the team’s fifty year history. It might not appeal to casual readers, but if you’re a fan, you should check it out.