All Killa, Na...
Filler.
Or not, as the case may be.
I know that as longtime readers of Full Bleed, you’ve become accustomed to monolithic columns dealing with a single subject and sometimes beating that subject to a pulp. Not so this week. This week, I’m going to beat upon several subjects and check out their pulp-ability, as well as their pulpiness quotient.
Why? You ask. Mostly because I’m very busy at the moment. On what? Can’t tell you that right now. It’s a SEEKRIT PROJEKT. Sssh! Don’t tell anyone about it, okay? I think it’s a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably nothing more than business as usual in the Big Bad World. Readers are welcome to entertain guesses as to the nature of what said SEEKRIT PROJEKT is over in the Full Bleed forum (you do know about those, right?) I might even tell you if you’re on the right track.
So, I read Grim Tidings this week. I swear to God that I’ve never been to Scotland. Nor have I met Graeme in the flesh, though I can tell you that his English is quite good for a Scotsman. And no, the column hasn’t inspired me to share with you my comics-inspired dreams. My dreams are pretty boring affairs, really. The plot is about as jumbled as anything Robbe-Grillet came up with, cinematography by David Lynch (at age 3) and muddled sound. I guess it’d be a goldmine for Jungian therapy, but as entertainment, it sure ain’t much.
Okay, right. Onto the next one. Spoilers for New X-Men #146 after this point. If you don’t already know the big secret, I suggest just skipping the next couple of paragraphs. You’ve been warned.
So, we find out that Xorn of New X-Men was really Magneto in disguise all along. Tell you the truth, I didn’t see it coming. I knew that something was up with Xorn, starting a ways back, as he’d made some definite turns in character, but I couldn’t have guessed this. It’ll be fun to go back and look at all the little clues leading up to it. So, anyways, soap opera twist, no big deal right? I mean this is X-Men after all.
What’s amused me about all of this is how folks are up in arms about being betrayed by Mr. Morrison’s plot twist. I’ve seen some get really bent out of shape about it, talking about how Xorn was their favorite character and how these things just shouldn’t happen and how none of this is realistic. Or, my favorite, how everything is going to return to status quo after Mr. Morrison’s run, how none of it’ll be REAL then.
Well, not to sound too much like William Shatner, but guess what? It ISN’T REAL. It’s an imaginary story set in an imaginary universe with imaginary people going through motions set in play by writers and artists, and carefully overseen by a benevolent set of celestial beings carefully tending the all-important franchise and making sure that nothing too terrible actually happens to it. It is a piece of serial culture, disposable and largely unread (if you take even the US population as a whole, much less the whole freakin’ world as a whole.)
The story is only real inasmuch as it makes you feel it’s real. Yeah, I know, how very Jesus Jones of me. I guess such behavior as above is testament to Mr. Morrison’s ability to tell a story (with some help from the rotating art team, obviously) and get the reader caught up in the proceedings. Of course, one might argue that too much of this is a bad thing, leading to all kinds of silliness like people thinking that they somehow OWN these characters and that the publishers/artists COULDN’T DARE do things like marry Superman and Lois Lane.
So, yeah, where was I? Oh, right. Comics readers thinking they own comics shocker. Xorn is Magneto shocker. Well, really, that was a bit more of a shock than I thought. I do, however, wish that I hadn’t HAD THE DAMN TWIST SPOILED FOR ME. I know, my fault for logging into the Internet and checking comics sites in the past week. I don’t know how the story got leaked in the first place (though I understand that a number of folks working on the book knew way ahead of time, like at the time of Mr. Morrison’s original pitch for the story.) How they kept the lid on it this long, I’ll never guess.
But it does make me a tad nostalgic for the days when you could buy a comic and not know what was going to happen in this month’s issue. I can’t blame Diamond and the various publishers for using upcoming stories as selling tools to get folks interested in them, but nothing blows away enthusiasm for a story like knowing the twist that’s supposed to hit you in the gut like a cannonball and instead you’re just “okay, so when does he take the damn mask off already?”
I know. Fat chance that we’re going back to the old days. Which is one of the reasons that I don’t read upcoming blurbs on series that I follow (though in this case, I blundered into an unmarked spoiler). I don’t order out of Previews and I only check out stuff on new series or things that I don’t already know about. I want to be surprised. I want to have the whole thing unfold before me. Ideally, I’d wait for trades on everything, but that isn’t going to happen. Not unless I bail on comics discussion on the Internet just yet.
Not so sure that I’m ready to do that.
Right. That’s it for this week folks. Time for a burger. And fries.
Mmmm….fries.