Novelty

Trigger is ending soon. Which is fine. It’s an interesting story, but it's not really that good. I'm not that upset.

Wildcats 3.0 ended some while ago, and it was excellent. It was a fascinating story, dealing with superheroes that run a super-company. It didn't sell worth a damn apparently (at least to Wildstorm standards).

Human Target will be ending next month with #21. It tells intriguing stories about human identity, and how people tell the difference between themselves and others (which is more complex than it may sound). I love when Peter Milligan writes like this. His run on Shade the Changing Man in the early 90s is currently my favorite comic series ever written. I am greatly upset.

Uncanny X-Men has not really been that good since Joe Casey left (and to be honest his run was only getting really good at what turned out to be the end). Chuck Austen was basically horrible. Chris Claremont seems to be getting worse. His original run was, needless to say, classic fun. His first return to Uncanny (nine issues beginning with 381) was confusing, but I believe I’m the only person alive that enjoyed the Neo storylines. Then he left and went to X-treme. I soon got tired of that book, and it finally ended with last year's "Reload". Now he's back with Uncanny which is, as I see on the Diamond's top 300 list for March, is the twelfth best-selling book around.

Trigger is #191.

Human Target is #193.

I doubt either Wildcats or Shade ever got that high in the charts either.

This stinks. Uncanny should not be winning any readers. The stories are not that good, and are obviously written for an immature audience. It's a child’s book. The plot lines are unclear, and there is very little continuity between stories. The Hellfire Club was important a few months ago. Now there is a new evolution of dinosaurs in the Savage Land. I missed the closing of the last story and the beginning of the next one.

The thing is, I like these types of stories. I have no problem with superheroes doing silly superhero things, like flying to the moon, or going to Atlantis. The Savage Land, in X-Men comics, has often been a fun setting for some good ol' fashioned superheroing.

But this story is not good. It sounds like the reverberated echo of old Claremont stories that were once good. But it, in itself is not good. Plot has taken over at the expense of almost everything else. Morrison seemed to introduce Nano-sentinels, and now there are all sorts of nanomites attacking people, such as Rachel Summers, who is suppose to have something to do with the Phoenix (I know this was in X-treme towards the end, but I missed it). Chris Claremont on X-Men has a similar flavor to George Lucas on Star Wars.

I collect Uncanny X-Men, and will continue to get it on a monthly basis. I stopped midway through the Austen run because it was awful. Then I went back and got those issues cheap when I heard Claremont was coming back. I started collecting comics at age 11 with Uncanny X-Men 281. I stopped in my Junior year of high school, then started again when I was 20 with the release of the X-Men movie (383 was my first back). I have every issue of Uncanny from 93 on.

I am part of the reason that Uncanny X-Men is where it is.

It's the last part of x-zombie fan boy left in me. I want to buy these comics. I want them to be decent reads. I want to give Marvel my money for a good issue of Uncanny X-Men. But they're losing me.

It would seem as though I'm unique in that. Meanwhile, Human Target is cancelled at 21.

I understand that comics have to sell to continue going. I understand that superheroes are the most popular genre of comics. I understand that good comics are often overlooked for various reasons (and don’t sell). What I don't understand is the fascination with and allowance for bad comics.

My evil twin, Chris, pointed out the lack of novelty in comics recently, even the good ones. What’s sad is the lack of possible good in the bad comics. I liked Stormwatch: Team Achilles, but those stories stuck sometime. Micah Wright through a lot of shit on the wall, and often enough something would stick. Chris Claremont, meanwhile, has lost his throwing arm. None of it works, and it doesn’t seem like he’s been trying lately. Any day now I’ll take it off my pull list.

(I've discovered lately that if I rant long enough, I get the answers to my own questions).

I want something new. I want something amazing. There is a ton of great stuff out there, but it’s not the next generation.