expatNERD

Tag: X-Men

  • X-Factor

    We had a relaunch of X-Men last year with Jed MacKay and Gail Simone leading the way on the X-Men and Uncanny X-Men titles respectively. With those came another series of books, one of which was X-Factor. Bleeding Cool ran an article that some of these books, in particular Nyx and X-Factor that launched with the two main X-Titles would be cancelled at issue #10..and possibly X-Factor.

    I do hope X-Factor is not cancelled. Mark Russell is one of my favorite writers, and has been for the last few years or so. He is incredibly skilled at instilling wit and satire in his work and this really made X-Factor the perfect companion piece to the action packed X-Men book, and the family drama/with a healthy dose of action Uncanny X-Men.

    Plus my favorite character in the book is definitely Granny Smite. Her power is that she cannot die so she thrusts herself in dire situations that would kill anyone. But nope, she represents a generation that simply rolled up its sleeves and applied a bit of elbow grease to get the job done. And it is this grit that makes her a worthy addition to X-Factor and inspiration for this week’s doodle.

    She is clearly smiling as she falls down on a floor of spikes. I did show this to Franka and she did tell me she knew what it was supposed to look like.

    So there.

    Russel used X-Factor to put a mirror up to society and explored a lot of different things, such as how we use social media and how these companies are starting to influence our own society and create the inbetweens as we try to figure out how to interact with one another. Of course I do not want to get political, but he does this while also making it incredibly humorous.

    I am used to seeing Russell more on the DC side so it was interesting for me to see how he would do with a Marvel cast of characters. After reading his X-Factor for the first time, it was one of those things that developed to an ‘of course he would be great on X-Factor. If you are not familiar with Russell’s work I can heartily recommend you finding it and if memory serves he started to blow up from Cereal Fan-Fiction. Yes, you read that right.

    If X-Factor is cancelled then I do hope Marvel gives him something else. We need Mark Russell.

  • 04 – The Great Debate

    04 – The Great Debate

    Franka was a bit hesitant to include herself as one of the ‘characters’ in Solicitations. But I knew she had to appear at some point. This cannot just be a Curt and Marv show after all. And I think her introduction to the stage is very good.

    When you own a comic book store you do have a lot of debates that rage within it. Who is stronger? Weaker? Who can beat up Wolverine? That sort of thing. But I think one of the most popular debates has to be who started the comic book movie fever. Was it Blade, starring Wesley Snipes? Or was it X-Men that introduced Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to the world?

    It is hard to say. But being a teenager at the time when Blade came out, and someone who actually saw it in the cinema, I might have an opinion on this.

    Frankly, there were a whole lot of vampire movies during this period, both good and bad (*cough* Van Helsing *cough*; *hack* Dracula 2000 *hack*). Vampire movies were cool, and face it, comic book movies were not, thank you Batman and Robin. So if you had a vampire property on your hands you would push that production right up to the top because they were getting green lit left and right. If Blade was pitched as a comic book movie, would it have made it through that studio oversight scrutiny and be allowed to live? Probably not.

    So for this, I do have to agree with Franka. And not just because she is our in-house artist and drawing this comic, which incidentally gives her a lot of power especially as it pertains to my depiction. But simply because she is right.