Forum for Geeks

Pacheco is back, which is certainly a step up visually. It seems that Gillen is determined to bring back the lost art of long form caption boxes. He's almost the opposite of Fraction in this regard. There were some good character moments (particularly between Emma and Namor), but it feels like Gillen is using this arc to resolve some threads dangling from SWORD. Still better than the Tabla Rasa arc.

Thoughts?

Reviewed!

http://www.o-r-c.co.uk/component/conten ... n-9-review

It wasn't the best issue ever, but I'm so glad to see Land gone. Also, I thought Gillen tackled the issue incredibly well. I liked it a lot.

The thing I like most about Gillen is his fight scenes. He really makes it seem like the X-men have had years of training with each other, and they know how to work perfectly in unison. To me, this is what I like about reading the X-men, going back to Stan Lee's original run, where the five kids would mix up all their powers to create new ways to kick someones ass.

This is not how Avengers work at all. Avengers hit bad guys like piraña, diving in one at a time. They're on the same team, but they don't really work together. Because of that, I think Cyclops should have the advantage in AvX.

That being said, Gillen's stories and dialogue are stupid.

we never need to know anything from Danger's perspective, she's not a character, she's a prop.

it was neat to see the teamups even though they were largely inconsequential one panel fanfics. felt like a few pages of filler. i DO like the villain though. his cold treatment of the humans set him up nicely once he got his hands on Hope. next issue should be a big improvement.

oh, best moment was cyclops wishin for a mission! haha

Oh yeah, if anybody hasn't read the S.W.O.R.D mini, that villain was originally introduced in that...

Again, another fancy talking alien, where I have to remind Gillen that he doesn't know how to write aliens. He knows how to write assholes, and when he tries to write aliens, he's actually writing about asshole aliens. And he writes about them in every single arc of his uncanny run, except Sinister, who is an asshole, which fits fine. We need to put a cap on how many new villains Gillen is allowed to introduce, because he's making too many monsters that sound nothing like they look. This is getting worse than Carey, with his redundant bad guys.

I think his villains are the most interesting yet. I wish more would create new villains instead of just rehashing old villains/storylines.

I agree that you either love them or hate them though.

I liked it--almost hyper-condensed, kinda hard to take in at first, but Pacheco's art KILLS it (horray! No more Land! ) and the descriptions all sound really cool--every bit could have at least made for a good full sequence of a comic, let alone an issue.

The only flaw I can think of is that I've never heard of Unit before and, being a bit of a Whovian, it's a little weird to see the name used in this context.

I had no idea the situations best friend was so powerful.

The issue started off good, when SWORD showed up it started to go downhill and by the time Unit hit Canada it was back at being bad again. I take three issues.
1) I don't care for the Unit. He theorizes social practices and knows little enough about humans to learn through vivisection but he drops English idioms and slang like 'I've been dying to actually meet a human in the flesh' as if he were a native speaker. I also don't like his killing, execution style nonetheless, of a child to show the Unit's emotional detachment that could have been shown with a full grown adult.
2) As others have said, the caption boxes return with a vengeance. But they seem mostly filled with what I feel is junk writing. Like when comic writers in the 60's would call something an 'electro-magnetic thermo-nuclear graviton disc,' it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but it sounds smart. All of the team-up boxes are filled with this garbage.
3) This horrid dialogue. I nominate 'Saving a mutant? That's saving the world too.' for the worst line of dialogue. I feel like a member of GIJoe should drop in and remind me that 'knowing is half the battle.'
If this is extinction level writing, let me go extinct. But, this was better than the Tabula Rasa arc.