Monday, December 19, 2011

X-Men: THE EXTREMISTS and HOUSE OF M Mini Reviews

I read these for the Graphic Novel Challenge.

So I love X-Men, but I am a very amateur fan. I've only read a few of the comics, watched some of the kids shows, and of course the movies. My buddy Kemendraugh recommended House of M to me, and The Extremists was just sitting on the library shelf so I picked it up, prepared to be completely confused (and oh, I was).

 


The Extremists is part of the Uncanny X-Men storyline, so there was obviously a lot going on previous to the volume I read. The story focused on a group called the Morlocks, who are trying to, you know, get humans to accept mutants, but this is an EXTREMIST group of those so they, you know, wander around disfiguring humans. As one does. The X-Men are all HEY NOW and there's prophecies for the future and a group of prophecy-sycophants and it was all very fascinating. I was mostly concerned with Leech, who is in mortal peril the entire time, and his buddy Caliban. Storm was a key character, I think. But yeah I was really confused by the story so I'd really only recommend it if you know where you are and what you're doing and what your purpose in life is. I wasn't very impressed with the dialogue writing in this one, regardless, which encouraged me to skim because everyone talked the same (except for the main Morlock and Caliban) and it was all very boring. Rating 3/5 stars.

House of M was excellent (of course, because Kemendraugh recommended it!). It starts out with a super-powerful mutant chick going crazy and altering the entire universe (so there's that). The only one who remembers what life was like before is Wolverine (of course). So he has to figure out what's going on, tell other people, and they have to decide if they should change the world back, and how. I was very distracted by Spiderman in this volume (The Avengers are in it). I've recently realized that my Spiderman love has nothing to do with the movies because every time he pops up in a comic, I'm just HEY THERE SPIDERMAN LET'S FOLLOW YOUR TINY SUBPLOT AND IGNORE EVERYONE ELSE. I really liked his tiny subplot here. ^_^ The writing in this volume was awesome too, hilarious and interesting and driven. Yes, driven, as in you needed to read all of it rather than just look at the pictures. Rating 4/5 stars.

1 comment:

Snazel said...

Okay, so I'll read House Of M, and not The Extremists. Noted.