By: Jason Aaron (writer), Adam Kubert (penciler), Mark Roslan (inks), Jason Keith (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: The final issue where we see how the X-Men split up and why.
What’s Good: It’s always nice to jiggle the status quo. The X-Men have spent the last ~3 years living in San Francisco with a big “Welcome” sign hanging outside for any mutant who wanted to join them. That was fun and enjoyable, but now we’re going to get something new and that’s a good thing. As long as the status quo is constantly shifting under the character’s feet, the writers and artists always have new things that can help to inspire them. There are all kinds of cool possibilities from the X-Men splitting into two groups. In some ways, it can be a small microcosm of the superhero Civil War and in others, it’ll just be fun to see how the two groups respond differently to external events. Like, what happens now if a mutant baby is born: Do both sides send a team? Do they consult each other first? Do they fight? Movement forward in the story is almost always a positive.
The other neat thing in this issue was that the young mutants made good and helped to take down the super-Sentinel. Even though the story of the teenage hero taking down a Big Bad who seemed to tough for them is not new, it’s always one of those things that make me smile. Always…
What’s Not So Good: This wasn’t a great issue from an artistic standpoint and I really question why the X-editors chose to end the series with Adam Kubert because I thought he really struggled in places. I mean, you had Alan Davis signed to do an issue… Why not let him do the finale? There are a LOT of stiff looking characters. It almost looks like Kubert was using Poser because even during the fight scenes, the characters have bent arms and legs indicating action, but they look more like posed action figures… There’s just NO energy anywhere. There’s also a lot of weird anatomy (a Wolverine biceps opposite the elbow joint?) and weird uses of muscle groups. I’m also not a fan of his interpretation of Wolverine. He looks just a little too young and smooth faced everywhere and I really don’t think he wears one of those dorky Kenny Chesney cowboy hats with the sides scrunched in. The man is a cowboy from the Canadian Rockies, he wears a cowboy hat because it keeps the rain off his head, not as a style accessory. Where are the X-editors when this crap is going on? Do they supervise the artists at all?
The story also got choppy. The story of the “brain slugs” that got put on Emma, Namor, Magneto, etc. at the mutant museum attack just resolved itself. Actually, we don’t really know how the slugs came off, we just see a panel of Emma’s foot squishing the slug and the problem is resolved. And the new Hellfire Club feels very tacked-on to this issue. I understand that they caused all of this, but when they show the kids eating popcorn and watching the mayhem from across the bay, I had no clue who those kids were– a caption box would have been nice. Actually, the more I see them, the less I like the new Hellfire club. They’re kids and kids aren’t scary. All adults know that even really smart kids can be outwitted pretty easily by adults who have guile and experience (or upper body strength). I guess my point is that even if they are smarter, they can’t be that much smarter, and certainly not smart enough to make up for lack of experience since it isn’t like the X-Men are a bunch of dummies.
Conclusion: This series and issue got us from Point A to Point B, but it wasn’t great and I question the art choices in this final issue. But, it does open up a bunch of possibilities for the X-Men. Going forward we can still have the SF based stories that we’ve enjoyed (without Wolverine in every story) AND cover some new ground with Wolverine’s group.
Grade: D+
- Dean Stell
Filed under: Marvel Comics Tagged: | Adam Kubert, Daniel Ketchum, Jared K. Fletcher, Jason Aaron, Jason Keith, Jordan D. White, Mark Roslam, Marvel, Nick Lowe, review, Schism, X-Men, X-Men Schism #5, X-Men Schism #5 review
This was all editorially mandated so they could position the chess pieces around to manufacture the breakup into two teams, all for the purpose of short term sales boosts. This is another classic case of marketing trumping good storytelling. In decades past, it was the other way around, good storytelling trumped marketing.
Well….of course marketing trumps storytelling. But that’s true for any comic from any publisher. The hope is the the two sync up. I kinda wish we could go back to the days where happenings like contained in this miniseries would happen organically within the pages of Uncanny X-Men, but that day is long gone because they’ve learned they can sell more comics this way.
I also tend to think that editors are less involved in storytelling that we often think they are.
Yes, but don’t you think readers are turned off by this continuous kind of forced marketing event. The bad economy notwithstanding, I think the downturn in sales is due in large part to phony event burnout and the constant “universe changing” stuff they push every couple of years. Also, I’m not convinced they sell more comics by turning the stories into mini-series instead of having them happen in the main title.
I dunno….maybe. I think they definitely lose some readers to this nonsense and it annoys me too. My personal feeling isn’t that they have too many events, it’s that the ideas are too thin to deserve as many issues as they give them. Schism could’ve been 2 issues. Fear Itself could’ve been a 2 month crossover among Invincible Iron Man, Might Thor and Avengers and been done in 6 issues. Instead everything get’s stretched out because they know that we’re all a little OCD and will tend to buy it.
I think that relates to why sales are down. They just don’t have enough happening to justify the number of titles and issues they publish. Too much writing for the trade and over expansion of franchises like the X-Men and Avengers. And….they will never get truly new readers into the comic shops. Too many macro forces working against the concept of newbies deciding to shop in a specialty shop that is based around ordering your comics 3 months in advance.
The biggest hope for this industry is the digital revolution. My prediction is that digital is going to rapidly overtake single issue sales. Probably within 18-24 months and I think that digital has hope to reverse a lot of this BS. Once you don’t have to buy RIGHT NOW out of fear that the single issue won’t be at the comic shop next time, it changes the system from buying out of a sense of duty/obligation/habit to one of buying what you feel compelled to read. That means they’ll have to publish compelling material OR folks like us will just sit back and say, “Let’s see how that all shakes out.” And, the 5-star rating system will be brutal too. Who’s going to read something that get’s 2 stars? But right now, we have to preorder a lot of stuff that turns out to be crap.
Anyhow….just my two cents.
I’m still not convinced that a) the split was necessary, and b) they would split for these reasons. If anything, I would have imagined Xavier/Magneto taking Wolverine’s stance and Cyclops/Wolverine taking Cyclops’ stance. Old vs Young kind of thing.
I hear you. My expectations are just really low with story quality in my shared universe comics. I really just demand that the story maintain forward momentum and change things up. No standing still. I’m much pickier about out of character actions in my Vertigo-Image-Other comics where I demand more coherent stories.
Yeah, the particulars of the split may not be organic, but I for one am I happy that it’s happening nonetheless.
While there were other reasons, the gigantic cast was a pretty major reason for why Fraction’s run was so underwhelming.
Well, that and “large cast” and “Greg Land” don’t exactly work well together…
Regarding the art: Cyclops has his left arm/hand bandaged at the end when it seem like Wolverine’s claws punch through his right. Also, during the Wolverine Cyclops fight the detonator appears to switch from Wolverine’s hands panel to panel. The art is really bad and editorial is worse.
It’s nice to know it isn’t just me. I’m really sick of the X-editors. For the last 4-5 years, they’ve created an environment where this kinda stuff is acceptable & that tells me they’ve failed as managers of the process. I don’t think editors should be leering over the artists’ shoulders, but they need to create an environment where artists know that they have to achieve a certain standard or they’ll get called out on it.
Like you say, little stuff like a bandage switching places…..that’s the easy stuff. Any professional artist should get that stuff right 999 times out of 1000. That stuff is just like showing up for work on time. It just pisses me off when people screw up the easy stuff because that’s completely within your own power and isn’t dependent on talent.
Or the editors noticed the gaffs and didnt feel like sending it back to Kubert to redraw the pages fearing it would delay the book. I’m not sure which is worse: noticing it and ignoring it or simply not seeing or caring.
It’s really a shame either way.
Could be that too and they just said, “Crap. We have to let this slide because we’ve got all these X-series relaunching in a few weeks.”
Or, it could be that Aaron’s scripts are loose and don’t include heaps of information for the artist and these are all artists he hasn’t worked with before. I could see hiccups coming about that way too, but THAT is when an editor should be a little more visible to make sure the process hums along.
I think they dont even do their job, they are just there just because, they dont edit anything, and they just leave it to the “professional artist” since they are so overrated that they couldnt possibly make a mistake, “they are goin to buy it anyways, so who cares?”
Yep…And that is sad because good editors are incredible. It’s fun to bag on editors for interfering, but good editors just make the process and product better and lots of creative types enjoy working with a good editor who establishes expectations and sees that they’re met.