X-Men Forever, v. 2: The Secret History of the Sentinels

Collects: X-Men Forever #6-10 (2009)

Released: March 2010 (Marvel)

Format: 120 pages / color / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785136804

What is this?: Before they bury Wolverine, the X-Men dig deeper into the conspiracy against them and find Sentinels.

The culprits: Writer Chris Claremont and artists Paul Smith and Steve Scott

Whatever goodwill I had for X-Men Forever led me to buy X-Men Forever, v. 2: The Secret History of the Sentinels. After the newness of the concept of writer Chris Claremont’s elaborate What If? series (featuring the X-Men) wore off, what would be left?

The answer — as if you needed to be told — is writer Chris Claremont.

Claremont’s distinctive dialogue and cadences overwhelm everything else in Secret History. If this were a decade ago, when Claremont was returning the X-titles and this might do any good, an intervention would be in order, with his colleagues and editors showing him how his verbal tics and word balloons were hurting those around him. Given that an intervention is out of the question, Claremont needs someone to do something similar to what former Marvel editor Christopher Priest said his assistant, Maddie / Adam Blaustein, did with Peter David — winnow down his excesses while leaving the essential, appealing essence of the writer. Isn’t that what an editor is for? Perhaps not. In any event, it’s not worth the effort now; Claremont is who he is, his work is what it is, and almost everyone knows how he or she feels about that.

For those of you playing Claremont cliché bingo, using Secret History, I will serve as caller: Baseball. Vintage plane fetishism. X-Men cleaning up the wreckage of one of their fights. Obtrusive military slang. Danger Room malfunction. Bad accent (Gambit only, oddly, even though Nightcrawler and Cannonball are in this book). “Best at what I do” (non-Wolverine division). If you did not win, best of luck next time; I’m sure the “mind control” square on your card is certain to be covered next time.

The story involves the return of the Sentinels, as you would guess form the title. With Nick Fury part of the book’s cast, Claremont makes the dramatic choice to tie the Trask family, who created the Sentinels, to the Nazis. This seems unnecessary but ultimately harmless, but Claremont links a couple of other characters to World War II and the Fury’s old commando group: SHIELD agents Daisy Dugan and Tommy Juniper, the latter explicitly the great-nephew of Howler casualty Junior Juniper. If this were a SHIELD book, these generational links would be a great idea. But this isn’t a SHIELD book; it’s an X-Men book. And the X-Men are firmly tied to the beginning of Marvel’s ten-year (or twelve-year or fifteen-year) timeline. Delving into their past tends to lead into Xavier, Juggernaut, or Magneto stories, areas that have long since been overmined.

On the other hand, the X-Men do have one character with whom the theme of family does work: Cyclops, who ironically started as an orphan. The book’s most affecting scene is its final one, two pages of Cyclops flying to Alaska to visit his grandparents, father, and son in Alaska. Scott reuniting with his son, Nathan, and their interaction feels real and is touching because of that.

That last issue is the best in Secret History. In #10, the X-Men hold a funeral for Wolverine, who died all the way back in #1. It’s not a perfect issue, God knows — unrestrained by action, Claremont's word balloons overrun everything, like a sort of verbal kudzu. But given that the action in the rest of the book is nothing to remember, something different is welcome. The issue gives everyone a chance to take stock and reflect. The New Mutants, Excalibur, Fantastic Four, and an abbreviated Avengers team show up, as do various X-Men hangers-on and ex-X-Men. It feels like an important event without being too clichéd or overwrought; the funeral itself takes only two pages, with Cyclops giving the eulogy.

The rest of the volume is forgettable, at best. Issue #6 is an embarrassment of X-clichés, with the X-Men playing baseball among wreckage in the Danger Room, which as a matter of course malfunctions. The next three issues feature a battle against a Trask and her Sentinels, ending with a particularly anticlimactic fight that Jean Grey ends by throwing a tantrum.

The subplots are ignorable. Claremont tries to interest readers in a conspiracy vs. the X-Men, but it’s not working. “Continuum” is a dull name, there’s no hint of what exactly the group’s agenda or grief with the X-Men is, and revealing one of the conspiracy's heads is the newly introduced mother of another newly introduced character is underwhelming. The flashbacks — Logan teaming up with Fury’s Howling Commandos in World War II and Bolivar Trask showing his family his Sentinel works — are old hat and dull. The only interesting subplot involves the child Storm, who is trying to figure out what she is and where she should go; this actually gives Gambit a bit of relevance, since he serves as Storm’s hedonistic counsel against the moralistic X-Men. Forge and lil’ Storm’s reactions toward each other at Wolverine’s funeral is a nice touch.

The art is fine. Paul Smith draws #6 and #10, and he’s exactly the type of artist you’d expect Marvel to assign to Claremont’s nostalgia title. Smith worked with Claremont on Uncanny X-Men #165-70 and 172-5, including most of the issues from the classic X-Men: From the Ashes storyline. Smith’s art has changed over 30 years, of course, and at times it looks like it’s taken on some characteristics of fellow Claremont collaborator Rick Leonardi’s work. On the other hand, Steve Scott isn’t a classic Marvel artist, and the bulk of his work for the company comes on the Marvel Adventures line. He’s a good choice for that, as his line is clean and his characters are bright and attractive, easy to tell apart. It’s not a distinctive style, though, which might have been what Marvel was aiming for; if you’re reading Claremont in the 21st century, do you really want something to distract you from Claremont’s plot and words? No, you do not; Claremont’s the feature here.

Secret History isn’t bad; its sin is larger. This book is just not that interesting, and the greatest emotion it arouses in me is occasional annoyance. Some will feel the warm flush of nostalgia when they read Secret History, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m well insulated against that warmth, however, and I think most readers are as well.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)

X-Men vs. Apocalypse, v. 2: Ages of Apocalypse

Collects: X-51 #8, Uncanny X-Men #378, Uncanny X-Men Annual ‘99, Wolverine #148, Cable #77, X-Men #98, X-Men: The Search for Cyclops #1-4 (2000-1)

Released: September 2008 (Marvel)

Format: 288 pages / color / $29.99 / ISBN: 9780785122647

What is this?: Continuation from X-Men vs. Apocalypse, v. 1, picking up almost immediately after the previous volume leaves off.

The culprits: A predictably large crossover cast; writer Joseph Harris and artist Tom Raney get the biggest chunk of the book.

If you would have told me I would prefer X-Men vs. Apocalypse, v. 2: Ages of Apocalypse to X-Men vs. Apocalypse, v. 1, I would have called you a damn dirty liar and punched you in the face.

Well, I probably wouldn’t have punched you in the face, since the court-ordered treatments have taken care of that. (Mostly.) But I probably would have thought you had a few servomotors malfunctioning in your metaphorical power armor.

I remember reading most of these stories when they came out, back at the turn of the century, and thought they were, for the most part, forgettable. Putting aside the idea I can remember something as forgettable, it certainly felt it was not a worthy follow up to the storyline that ended The Twelve storyline once and for all. Having actually read what was in v. 1, however, I have to reappraise v. 2.

Don’t get me wrong; the quality of the content in Ages of Apocalypse is wildly variable. X-51 #8 and Uncanny X-Men Annual ’99 have nothing to do with Apocalypse and are included because, well, they seem to fit in the chronology, even if the characters’ chronology is a distraction from the plot. Not that the plot itself is much to write home about, but I have to pay lip service to it.

In v. 1, Apocalypse didn’t gain all the power he wanted, and he usurped the wrong body; to rectify this, he makes the X-Men think they are in various alternate realities so they will expend their energies and he can harvest them. Fair enough, although the stories sort of wave their hands in the general direction of how Apocalypse actually harvests it. The alternate realities stretch from the founding of the X-Men to the far future.

The best of the stories have fun with the alternate realities. Erik Larsen and Roger Cruz tell a story of the very brief, how-Bendis-might-have-conceived-them “New” Fantastic Four that briefly formed in Fantastic Four #347-9. Larsen doesn’t worry about making the story coherent; he drops readers into an action sequence, and keeps blowing stuff up and having the Fantastic Four save the day. It is far and away the best part of the book, and parenthetically, it’s the best part of Larsen’s otherwise disappointing run on Wolverine. The rest of the stories aren’t that kinetic, but they have their highlights: Adam Kubert’s Rogue as Mastermind-in-Uncanny-X-Men #1 is very nice, and Alan Davis has fun with the far future X-Men in X-Men #98, which serves as an excellent coda to the stories.

Not all of the stories are as fun, of course; Bernard Chang’s art in Cable #77 is stiff, and the plot is nothing to write home about. The lettering in Cable bothers me, just as it did in v. 1; it’s distracting and adds nothing to the story. X-Men Unlimited #26 is eminently forgettable, as most X-Men Unlimited stories were after the first year.

Whether the book succeeds depends on the miniseries collected at the end of Ages of Apocalypse: The Search for Cyclops. It’s a serviceable return to the status quo by Joseph Harris and Tom Raney, although no one’s going to remember it in a few years. In fact, no one remembers it now. But Harris was given the order to return things to the status quo, and he manages to do it.

It’s disappointing, but it was inevitable. The story doesn’t tread any new ground, except to introduce Anais, another superpowered follower of Apocalypse. I would have rather an old henchman of Apocalypse fulfilled her role; really, to build the idea that this might be the end for Apocalypse, it would have been better to throw in more of his old allies, such as the Dark Riders, his Horsemen, or the Alliance of Evil. Instead, we get Gauntlet, a former member of the Dark Riders, acting as an assassin, and … well, that’s it. There’s three issues of Scott wondering who he really is and Jean and Cable arguing over whether they can kill the merged Cyclops and Apocalypse, followed by one issue of fighting. As I said, disappointing, but inevitable. (Well, inevitable except for the odd alternate covers for issues #2 and 3, which feature Jean and / or Scott semi-clothed despite no hint of sensual content in any part of the series. But that’s just an odd cover choice.)

As I said, I enjoyed this more than v. 1. That does not, of course, make it good. The entirety of this series is best left to the X-Men fans, perhaps as a punishment for being on top of the comic-book heap for so long.

Rating: (2 of 5)