X-Men Reload Volume 1 by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis and others
2000s, collected in 2018
Is this series remembered well by people who didn't grow up with Chris Claremont X-Men? It was a weird time for X-Men to try to go retro.
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| I don't remember Alan Davis drawing women's necks so long |
In the mid-2000s, I started getting back into mainstream comics, and I read a trade of the first six issues of this, issues 444-449, and it was okay, but I'd just read Brubaker's Captain America and the Grant Morrison New X-Men run. Whedon's Astonishing X-Men may have been coming out at that time as well. Alan Davis is one of my favorite mainstream pencillers, so I was expecting to love the book, but I just didn't. In comparison to those other books, there just didn't seem to be much going on in these issues, and I never read beyond issue 449 of UXM until Brubaker took over writing duties.
Recently, this collection of 444-461 was at a discount, so I decided to give it another shot. Over a decade had passed, and I've been reading a lot more older comics, so I just had very different expectations going in.
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| You get the feeling Davis could draw these characters from any angle |
And I liked it better! There were some problems with it, some major problems, but on the whole, it was enjoyable to read. The thing is, it still wasn't great, so I don't know that its high points made up for the lows.
I want to start with the praise: Alan Davis kills it. Every page has love and attention to detail. Claremont's strong point is character work, and Davis draws every emotion on everyone's face. Davis might be the guy most capable of realizing Claremont's talent. I especially enjoyed the conversations between characters, the smiles and the facial expressions. Davis can draw action well too, but it's not where he shines. He's given all different locations to draw as well, and each come out fully realized. It's exceptional work.
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| That's a ridiculously well-rendered night club |
Claremont does do great character work... with Davis. His work with other artists falls flatter. They try, but that's just not what they're good at, and it can be hard to look at. Davis draws most of the book, but three other artists draw short 2-3 issue arcs between Davis' longer arcs and they all suffer in comparison.
I had remembered Claremont's writing in this as being too wordy, and it really isn't. Narration is limited to a point of view character, and isn't too obtrusive. I actually liked the pace of these stories quite a lot. Breezier than the 80s, and meatier than most modern books.
That's the main stuff I liked and I enjoyed it a great amount. I was buying Claremont and Davis Excalibur off the stands, and it's pleasurable to see them write and draw characters they both seem to have enormous affection for.
The bad stuff though...
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| This is the worst looking page I saw in a Marvel comic in quite some time |
As I wrote, the other artists just aren't up to the task. It's not bad work, but it's pretty bland.
And Claremont isn't giving them gold to work with either. In four of six arcs, the X-Men lose their powers, and two of those times it's because of nanites. I just shrugged my shoulders and powered ahead.
The villains aren't what pretty much anyone wants to see. The first story has the Fury from the old Captain Britain comics, followed by the Viper taking over Murderworld from Arcade, a mutant mafioso named Geech, Sebastian Shaw, and finally some evolved dinosaurs in the Savageland and the Savage Land Mutates! Nobody likes the Savage Land Mutates, do they? But Claremont keeps bringing them back. It's like the book is a nostalgia series for Claremont himself, the things he misses writing. I suppose he should be writing stuff he's passionate about, but sometimes...
Claremont is forced to juggle a lot of continuity in this. He brings Psylocke back from the dead, Colossus is brought back from the dead in Astonishing, Jean Grey is killed off in adjective-less X-Men, Wolverine goes rogue in his own title, and I think X-23 is brought in from somewhere else. I don't know if he chose to deal with it all or if the editor forced him to reconcile all this continuity, but he ends up doing it. It is a noble effort, but, as a reader, that's a lot of other titles you're forced to discern the happenings of. And at the end, House of M is teased, so it is only going to get worse in the next collection.
Finally, he loves Sage. I kind of know who Sage is, she's been used a bit in the current HoX/PoX run, but she is Claremont's Poochie here. When she's not the center of the story, other characters are talking about her and trying to figure out what she's doing. And at the end, I had no real idea of who she was, and wasn't interested in it either. Her use was a prime example of tell, don't show.
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| Nobody was asking for this |
The other disappointment in this was the use of Psylocke and Captain Britain's brother Jamie Braddock as a subplot, which would seem to be resolved in the next collection. I think he's as uninteresting a character as it gets: a malicious reality warper that generally treats characters as playthings. In a series with a roster of villains like Mr. Sinister or that Shadow King, Jamie
Braddock just isn't bringing much to the table.
I enjoyed reading the book overall, because I enjoy the experience of Claremont and Davis doing X-Men so much, but it's not a great book, and I probably would never recommend it to anyone not already partial to the X-Men. Now to see how much that second collection currently is selling for. I can't stop myself.
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