Some comics...

I haven't done a lot of comic book blogging in the last few weeks (months?), in part because I've been buying trades and graphic novels almost exclusively, but also because a lot of the monthlies I've bought haven't done much to hold my interest.

Uncanny X-Men 502. I think that I might kinda like this story if it weren't for Greg Land's art. There's something very mid-80s Claremont about it, what with the composition of the team, a New Mutant, a Hellion, and the Hellfire Club all making appearances. I don't know what it's all supposed to add up to, though. 501 seemed to be playing with nostalgia - we get the Sentinels and Magneto in that first issue, but as a tasteless art installation and with imitation powers, respectively. This Hellfire Gang seems like an unimpressive twist on the Club, but maybe it needs time to go somewhere. As for Land, his visuals are stiff and flat, the transitions between panels are awkward or incoherent (I shouldn't have to look back and forth between them to figure out where someone came from or how they could have possibly moved like that), and his faces are just... freaky. What kind of expression is Pixie making on page 5 and why is she making it as she gets her head knocked in by a baseball bat? And why does Cyclops always have a completely ridiculous and entirely out-of-character shit-eating grin?

Astonishing X-Men 26. I read this maybe two weeks ago, but I seem to have retained virtually none of it. I remember the villain being slightly creepy and the plot trudging forward at a snail's pace. (Flips through it very quickly.) Ah, yes, and his head explodes or something at the end. And there's a really long discussion about whether the X-Men should kill which is, again, not terribly interesting because it's a discussion that they've had dozens of times and they should all be quite sure of where each other stand on the issue. They couldn't fit in a B-story or something? I'm starting to be of the mind that it's better to be explicitly bad than it is to be boring - and this is boring.

I also picked up the first issue of Omega The Unknown, because I had read a bit about its background and it sounded interesting. And that first issue, at least, wasn't disappointing. Maybe I just need a break from mainstream superhero stuff.