So, a week or so ago I started clearing out my box at The Dreaming.  Yay! 

I picked up the first five issues of X-men Forever, X-men Origins: Nightcrawler, some PS 238 and Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers issues 1 and 2.  So, this Saturday, after very responsibly cleaning the house, picking up a new TV that a friend gave us, running a couple other errands, and making dinner for Tammy and I, I decided my reward for being a grown up was to sit on my bed and watch the Muppet Show while reading comics.

Because I am a grown up.

So I read the first five X-men Forever (yes, I know, I’m way behind), and I’m digging on it so far.  I really enjoy the storyline, I’m a little confused by the Ororo -v- Ro thing, but I’m sure that will sort itself out.  Although part of me is seriously considering digging out the appropirate comics from 1991 to get all the background (I have them, yes, I do).   I do admit to a little bit of “Cobra would never fight drug dealers with GI Joe”* going on in my head at the idea of Sabretooth working with the X-men, regardless of the reason.  But I do like the writing, the art is good and a style I enjoy.  The storyline with Nick Fury and SHIELD taking more and more control over the group has got a delightful creeping anxiety quality to it that is unsettling in a good way.  I don’t know about this whole “mutants burn themselves out young” thing that they’ve got going on, but we’ll see where they go with that.  I am more than willing to continue reading to see what they do with it.

I picked up 6 and 7 this weekend while dropping off another box of used gaming books and a couple of duplicate comics.  I’m really looking forward to reading them. 

X-men Origins:  Nightcrawler, I’m a little less enthused about.  I don’t hate it.  But I always liked that Nightcrawler got to have a happy childhood, the juxtaposition of the kid who looked like a demon having a happier childhood than most of his more conventional-looking team-mates just seemed right to me.  I don’t care for this new, “The Rom drove Margolis and her children out because she rescued Kurt, and they’ve been working for this awful, sadistic, child-abusing douchebag ever since” backstory. 

Granted, as no one has said thing one about the Devil being his father, I’m more ok with it than with past backstories.  *cough* Chuck Austen *cough*

But I’m just not thrilled.  I always liked Nightcrawler’s childhood, and this retcon makes me kind of sad.  His adult life has been tragic enough, do we have to give him a screwed up, tragic childhood as well?

Then I read Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers issues 1 and 2.  I very nearly gave up on it in the first three pages, because it starts out just nauseatingly twee.  I mean, so saccharine sweet you kind of want to barf, or inject insulin.  But it develops some real bite relatively soon after that.  Frog Thor (I love just typing that) has gone missing and the Pet Avengers are trying to track him down.  As a huge fan of the work of Diane Duane and other authors who have animals living lives parallel to the human world, I really enjoy the concept of all of this going on with the Pet Avengers, of which the humans/human-looking mutants are completely unaware.  As a literary critique nerd, this sort of thing echoes the hyper-awareness the underclass has to have regarding their “superiors.”  I.e. the servants know everything about the people they work for, but the employers don’t know a damn thing about their employees. 

Anyway, it is a conceit I enjoy greatly.  Plus the over-arching storyline of the myths returning to Earth (willingly or not) is one I have been madly in love with in so many incarnations over the years. 

Now that things are more settled, look for more comic columns again here. 

*This is something my father said while watching GI Joe with me in the early 1990s over Saturday morning breakfast.