This month, the Ninth Art editorial board cracks open the booze and settles down to discuss the relaunch of the X-Men books, looking at the first issues of EXILES and THE BROTHERHOOD, and the new directions on X-FORCE, UNCANNY X-MEN and NEW X-MEN. We ignored Claremont's new book, because even we still have some self-respect.

Warning: This article contains spoilers.

ANTONY: Andrew, you're the seasoned X-Men reader, what do you think of this so-called slimming down of the titles?

ANDREW: It's been a lifetime commitment for me. I did something terrible in a past life.

ANTONY: I think X-Men is the least of your worries for that.

ANDREW: Clearly it hasn't slimmed down. The line has dropped a couple of titles and had a couple introduced. It's a reorganisation. But that's a good thing. It looks like it's going to be an effective idea, and there's been some thought put into it.

ANTONY: Certainly more than was put in to the previous organic branching of books.

ALASDAIR: Organic branching? Don't you mean cynical marketing?

ANTONY: In marketing terms, I think the two are the same.

ALASDAIR: I have no desire to think like a marketing person.

ANDREW: This is marketing too, but it's marketing with sense, marketing to a savvy audience. They know if they have new concepts and different concepts in each book, and they can make them distinct, then they can sell the trades better, get a more credible audience, get good reviews and get everyone to love them.

ANTONY: I'm sure that's the theory. Do you think they are distinct?

ANDREW: The books we're looking at here are all working within the same boundaries, there is a base concept here, but they are distinct enough.

ALASDAIR: All working off the theme of the outsider.

ANTONY: As base concepts go, that's pretty broad.

ANDREW: But it's always been the X-Men's base concept. The mutant, the freak, the outcast...

ALASDAIR: The teenager.

ANTONY: Are they emphasising that more?

ALASDAIR: Well, THE BROTHERHOOD is shouting it from the rooftops.

ANTONY: There is a fairly strong sense of that in all of them, from what I've read.

ANDREW: X-FORCE has certainly got it. Zeitgeist standing at the window saying, 'I hate you all'. It's there for better or worse in Casey's book, heavy-handed though it may be, and it's certainly there in Morrison. EXILES it's probably there the least. EXILES is the book that felt to me most like the old X-Men.

ALASDAIR: EXILES was just plain bad.

'I was just boggling at how bad the entire thing was.' ANTONY: I thought that the concept was bloody awful, but I doubt the concept was Judd Winick's.

ANDREW: I think it's such a clear gathering of the forces issue, with no guile to it. Winick could do so much better.

ANTONY: It's probably the best art out of the five. I've never heard of Mike McKone before, and I do like him.

ANDREW: He's not done a huge amount. He did that FANTASTIC FOUR: BIG TOWN. It's nice art, but compositionally it's not great.

ANTONY: I think Winick, being a cartoonist, probably had a lot more camera direction than you'd get with a normal Marvel script. Somewhere around the middle of the book, when this timebroker fellow is explaining how, in other realities, they're all dead or whatever, those two panels where Morph's jaw suddenly drops, that to me looks scripted, and it's a trait of Winick's.

ANDREW: Yeah, I recognised that. I think McKone needs a more generous writer, someone who is going to compose for his art style, rather than the writer's style, because as you say, it looks like Winick.

ANTONY: Did you laugh?

ANDREW: Not very much.

ANTONY: It made me chuckle. I like Winick's humour, everything of his has made me laugh. This made me chuckle. Not as much as BARRY WEEN, obviously.

ANDREW: Alasdair, you like Winick's humour. Why didn't this work?

ALASDAIR: Mostly because I was just boggling at how bad the entire thing was.

ANTONY: No, don't hold back, say what you think.

ALASDAIR: I like Winick's other writing. PEDRO AND ME is really excellent. BARRY WEEN makes me laugh like a drain and FRUMPY THE CLOWN nearly had me pissing my pants. Judd Winick is a funny man, but sadly he appears to have shat out a great turd here.

ANTONY: Was EXILES not plugged as a comedy book?

ANDREW: If it were a comedy book, it could go a lot further than it does.

ALASDAIR: Not only was the superhero element bland, this was also a bland WHAT IF story. We're here to save our great mentor and he turns out to be a bad guy. What a shock that was.

ANTONY: That's setting up for the rest of the series though, isn't it?

ALASDAIR: That's setting up for the next issue. This is SLIDERS, and you can do an over-arcing plot of someone following them through the dimensions, but the big excuse for this sort of thing is short self-contained stories in single issues. These people will now be spending their series hopping through different dimensions making things right.

ANTONY:I just thought it was bland, but you obviously actively didn't like it. Moving on, then; THE BROTHERHOOD, written by the mysterious X.

ALASDAIR: A lovely piece of art, it looks like it belongs on Vertigo's shelves.

ANTONY: I like it, but I can't help but think normal x-book readers are not going to like it. It looks like Jim Baikie to me, who did lots of 2000AD work and most of NEW STATESMAN.

ANDREW: Detestable book.

ANTONY: What I like about this is, it's not lush.

ANDREW: It looks really nice. It's not written that badly.

ANTONY: It's nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, from everyone saying, 'Oh my God, it's obviously Howard Mackie'.

ANDREW: The problem is, it very possibly is Mackie, and no-one wants to say that they like it, in case it turns out to be him. And I can understand that. The first few issues of MUTANT X, you read it and thought, this is actually the best thing he's done...

ANTONY: And then it all went to shit?

ANDREW: Very rapidly.

ALASDAIR: Mackie has a problem keeping continuity from issue to issue. If he starts having continuity problems in the next three issues, then we'll know it's Mackie.

ANDREW: I got the feeling... I'm not sure this is one man's work.

ANTONY: It wouldn't surprise me if this, like the Ultimate books, is Bill Jemas' idea, basically. Jemas plotting and someone else scripting.

ANDREW: The words don't necessarily ring like Mackie's. I think someone like Greg Rucka is ghosting.

ANTONY: It's good writing to an extent, apart from the appalling Claremont-like Australian dialogue.

ANDREW: The Australian dialogue is terrible, fond though I am of the Russell-Crowe-a-like mutant. The thing with the goths stinks of Mackie.

ALASDAIR: The thing where he's dealing with the school bully with nothing but witty repartee, it's not the most original banter in the world, but it's nice dialogue.

ANTONY: Slightly unrealistic. I can't think of any bullies I knew in school who'd be put off by a few smart words.

ANDREW: It was a huge big bastard that was saying them.

ALASDAIR: The lines are smarter than I've seen any Mackie character coming out with.

ANTONY: I've never read anything by Mackie, so I have no comparisons to make, but I thought this was alright. It's nice to see something with guys who aren't whiter-than-white good guys as the main characters.

ANDREW: The character names do feel like Mackie, like he's picked up a book of classical quotations and leafed through it. There are flaws. But I enjoyed it. I'll probably pick up the second issue.

ANTONY: You do know there's a rumour that X is actually a female mainstream fiction writer?

ANDREW: Mainstream? What does that mean?

ANTONY: Novels.

ANDREW: Someone like Poppy Z Brite?

ANTONY: The first name that came to my mind was actually Anne Rice, but yeah, Brite, possibly.

ALASDAIR: If it's Poppy Z Brite there'll be two blokes shagging within a couple of issues.

ANDREW: Hurrah!

ALASDAIR: Anyone who is pretentious enough to call themselves Poppy Z Brite is pretentious enough to call themselves X.

ANDREW:Maybe she's just moving up the alphabet. I'm not convinced this is Mackie.

ANTONY: I'm not convinced it's anyone.

ANDREW: Er...

ANTONY: It's a computer! No. The dialogue is awful in places, but really good in others. There's a bit where a character says, 'Welcome to The Brotherhood ... my brother.' Lost the thesaurus, did we? There are other bits where it's really understated. Maybe it is written by committee. That would make sense if it's Jemas, Quesada and Mackie all writing it together.

ANDREW: This is their love child.

ALASDAIR: Ew! Sticky in bad ways.

ANTONY: OK, X-FORCE. My first reaction when I heard about this was, what the fuck is Pete Milligan doing writing this? He cannot need the money.

ANDREW: And after reading it?

ANTONY: What the fuck is Milligan doing writing this? He cannot need the money. It's kind of... it's really difficult to judge on the one issue, because it all depends on what happens now that they've killed practically all of the team members. There's some great concepts, some really nifty dialogue, quite realistic treatment of how people would behave if they were megastar mutant soldiers...

ANDREW: They're much more complex characters than we're used to seeing in an X-Men team. I was really bowled over when I read this. The funny thing with Allred is, if you've not read his work before, you look at his art and think, why do people love this guy? Then you read it in flow, and think, well actually, yeah, he's really good.

'Why is Milligan writing this? He cannot need the money.' ANTONY: My only reservation is, I wish that he would stop simplifying, because I've got several short Vertigo stories of his from before he adopted this Kirby retro-schtick, and you can tell it's the same guy, but there's so much more detail, and it's so much nicer. His storytelling is fantastic, but it's not particularly attractive.

ALASDAIR: I had the same initial reaction to Milligan. What's he doing coming back to comics? He's got to like comics, but he's got money in Hollywood, why isn't he picking and choosing his projects, doing creator-owned trades, yadda yadda yadda?

ANTONY:He's done so many creator-owned and original projects where he got to create something entirely new. He's kind of created something new with this, in that it's new for the X-Men, but it's not entirely new. It's still the Marvel universe and it's still the X-Men.

ALASDAIR: This is totally original for Marvel, for the X-Men.

ANTONY: But not for Milligan.

ALASDAIR: Has Milligan done a story about bastard superheroes before?

ANTONY: Possibly not, but his contemporaries done things like this. This isn't that far removed from ZENITH on a conceptual level. On an execution level it's light-years away. I dunno, I kind of enjoyed this.

ANDREW: If you'd been reading X-Men you'd know that this stands out on the landscape

ANTONY: It's been having good reports. It's been selling out all over the place.

ANDREW: Did I tell you the story I heard in Gosh Comics? Pete Milligan came in with his dad, and went up to the counter and asked, 'Have you got any issues of X-FORCE left?' and they said, 'No no, sold out. Walked off the shelf'. And he said 'Oh, that's good', really downplaying it, and then as he's heading for the door his dad, full of enthusiasm, says, 'See son, isn't that fantastic? Ooh, you did well there, son.' He's like, 'Daaaaad'.

ANTONY: I thought this was going to be a tale of him turning around to his dad and saying, 'See dad? I have got a proper job'. Maybe it is just the fact that I'm not an X-Men reader, then. There was nothing wrong with this, and to an extent I enjoyed reading it, but I would not buy it, as a non-X reader.

ANDREW: But you're not much of a superhero reader either, and this is superheroes done in a different way. It's been done before, but it's not been done often, and there's plenty of room for it to be done again. And it's superheroes done in a way that's not THE AUTHORITY.

ANTONY: You're going to hate me for this, but it's actually closer to NEW STATESMAN than to AUTHORITY.

ANDREW: Yeah, it is. It's also much better.

ANTONY: You would say that, because you have no eyes. So a general thumbs up for X-FORCE, apart from - and I know you hate me for this - the 'Hey kids look, no code!'

ANDREW: I hate you for so many reasons.

ANTONY: It's one of the most childish things I've ever seen.

ANDREW: It's meant to be childish. I think it's fantastic.

ANTONY:It's not funny...

ANDREW: Well it made me laugh out loud!

ANTONY: Not big, not clever.

ANDREW: It's not that big. It is clever. You are such an old man, Johnston.

ANTONY: It's shock tactics!

ANDREW: It's funny shock tactics!

ANTONY: It's not in the least funny.

ANDREW: It made me laugh! And I'm laughing at you right now.

ANTONY: You've been reading x-books for fifteen years. I think we can safely assume your judgement's impaired. OK, my no-no-no vote goes to UNCANNY X-MEN.

ALASDAIR: It's so bland! It's so average!

ANTONY: I'm surprised but pleased that you agree. It's dreadful,

ANDREW: Churchill's done better art. He's never been a great artist, but he used to do stuff on CABLE that I liked.

ANTONY: The art doesn't offend me, because it's the sort of art I expect to see in this sort of book. Overblown, anatomically incorrect, badly framed, terrible expressions on people's faces.

ANDREW: The panel in this issue I probably hate the most is the one with Archangel flying overhead. It's meant to be that jaw-dropping panel.

ANTONY: It's meant to be epic, and it's so dark...

ANDREW: And his legs... it looks like he's been broken at the hip. His legs look like garbage bags that have been tied to his waist, flapping in the wind. It's supposed to be the AUTHORITY moment, and it doesn't work.

ANTONY: It doesn't help that its only just over half a page. This is one of the problems I have with Casey. He's obviously trying to do this widescreen, big action thing...

ALASDAIR: But he can't because he is dull.

ANTONY: Well, he doesn't give his artists enough room to do it. He's a bit like Millar in that he doesn't follow through on his ideas. I should say that there are a few panels in that which I think are gorgeous, and are actually much better in terms of impact than some of the stuff in NEW X-MEN.

ALASDAIR: There's a moment... here's the bit. You've got Wolverine and Jean Grey barrelling off to save the day in their magical all-powerful hypersonic jet...

ANTONY: I don't know about magical.

ANDREW: Leave him to his hyperbole.

ALASDAIR: I will keep my delusions. They're whipping half way across the world to save the day. Jean Grey gets a line of dialogue here, "time to skip across the upper atmosphere". Am I the only one who reads that and thinks, 'show, don't tell'. You've got a tight-in shot of Jean Grey's face. You could pull that out into a wide shot. You almost feel like he's stretching for that sense of wonder.

ANTONY: The thing about that panel is that Churchill wouldn't have got to do his cool shot of Wolverine with his cigar, and this is obviously important.

ANDREW: That issue is so full of those little lines where he thinks he's being clever. The line I hate the most is at the end, where Archangel says, "Wild eyed chaos bringer, out to have a good time, live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse..."

ALL: "I can relate."

ANDREW: Sad old bastard. It's watching your dad trying to dance again.

ALASDAIR: It's watching your dad trying to be Grant Morrison, which is even worse.

ANDREW: It occurs to me both of Casey's issues have this night club thing going on. 'Look how young I am!'

ANTONY: 'I'm hip!' So the general message to Joe Casey is, stop trying so hard?

ALASDAIR: Stop trying to be Grant Morrison. Please fuck off.

ANDREW: People say his WILDC.A.T.S is really good, and maybe they're idiots, or maybe he can do good stuff. I've seen him do better stuff...

ALASDAIR: I've seen him do average stuff.

'Casey's there to write filler issues. He should be at DC right now.' ANDREW: That's the thing, he's such a workmanlike writer, he's not America's Grant Morrison, which is what he thinks he is.

ALASDAIR: And here's the big thing, you don't play him off against Grant Morrison. That came out a week before Grant Morrison's, and there's a real problem there.

ANDREW: He's there to write filler issues and reliable stories, and he should be at DC right now.

ALASDAIR: He belongs churning out another anonymous SUPERMAN book. Oh, he is churning out another anonymous SUPERMAN book. Oh, I'm sorry.

ANTONY: Yes, let's not forget this is a man who writes SUPERMAN, for goodness' sakes.

ANDREW: He's also the man who co-wrote MR MAJESTIC, with Brian Holguin, and people loved that. There must be something there.

ALASDAIR: It's not a bad job, it's just a dull job, and if you're going to do a dull job when you're opposite Grant Morrison, you really ought to think about packing up and going home.

ANTONY: Joe, take more drugs. You're obviously far too straight.

ANDREW: Speaking of far too straight...

ANTONY: I had to save this one for last. NEW X-MEN. I've only just noticed how long Jean's legs are on the cover. That's quite ridiculous. And when did Xavier put on so much weight that his wheels buckled?

ANDREW: That's a fancy-schmancy wheelchair.

ANTONY: He's been eating too many Twinkies. Go on then, Mr Lifelong-X-Men-Reader.

ANDREW: In the year 2001, from any single issue of an ongoing superhero title, I've not read anything equal to that. I will remember this at the end of the year.

ALASDAIR: There's more that comes out to me the more I read it. Things like that page which kind of draws attention to the fact that all the men have codenames and the women don't. There's a lovely theme going through it of the male against the female, playing the two off.

ANDREW: It's a superhero book you can pick up and read three times in a row. Because it's Grant Morrison, you look for things and think, is that in there? I was thinking, is there a noughts and crosses motif in here? There's lots of X's, spurts of blood crossing over, lots of bubbles...

ALASDAIR: Lots of weird page layouts. There's one panel knocked out to bleed and it's framing all the others. There's some very clever, subtle stuff that works really nicely. Part of my brain begrudges this. I gave the X-Men up and I was proud of it. I want to keep reading this. I'm probably not going to. I will buy the trades, I know they're coming.

ANDREW: Ok, Antony, Mr I've-Never-Met-An-X-Men-Book-I-Wouldn't-Burn, what did you think?

ANTONY: I thought it was obviously Morrison. Yeah, I'm stating the obvious, but even if there were no names on this book I'd go, hmm, this is Grant, isn't it? Chicken Sentinels, the throwaway lines about Hindu sex gods, it's all very Morrison. This, of course, is no bad thing. From a PR part of view it's perfect. Morrison is one of the best writers working in comics today, and the problem with this is, it shows just how bloody average the majority of monthly output is.

ANDREW: Which is why it's such a shame that Casey is writing the other book.

ANTONY: Morrison is just a good writer. He could write a shopping list and make it interesting. This is no X-Men that I recognise, not even from the movies, and this is no superhero book that I recognise. As a comic this is very very good.

ANDREW: Will you buy the trades?

ANTONY: No.

ANDREW: Resolutely no?

ANTONY: Not resolutely no, but there's already stuff by Morrison that I don't own because I've got no real interest in it. I'm not suddenly going to buy this just because Morrison is writing it, but this is a tremendous treat for X-Men fans.

ALASDAIR: One that they have done nothing to deserve.

ANDREW: We have served our time!

ANTONY: This is probably the best writing they've had in years. Possibly the best art as well.

ALASDAIR: I've never seen an X-Men book that made me drool like this did. It casts his JLA into shadow.

ANDREW: I hated his JLA.

ALASDAIR: I bought all the trades.

ANDREW: You had a table that wobbled.

ALASDAIR: I thought they were nice, I thought they were a good example of how to do the JLA.

ANTONY: There are two very Morrisonesque things on this page alone, where they're having this mind conference with Professor X. One is the fact that Professor X has never looked more like Grant Morrison in his life, and I admire the way that he's managed to jettison decades of foolishness - i.e. the spandex outfits - without making the readers feel bad.

ALASDAIR: That's possibly my favourite page in the whole issue, partly for the layout, but also the way the X-Men are standing there, the body language.

ANDREW: As a long-time reader, when they were talking about who was going to be in the new teams, I was very disappointed with this line-up. Scott and Jean, bland couple. Beast is great, but Wolverine is overused, and the Professor has become such a tired character. And Emma Frost isn't in this, but Emma Frost is the character who I was cheering. I want to see Grant's Emma. Yet he's made all these characters interesting again, and he's picked well for what he wants to do.

ANTONY: If I were a new reader, chances are, coming to this, I'd say, oh yeah, I recognise these characters. Beast wasn't in the film, but you've heard of him. Everybody gets the concept of Beast at any rate.

ANDREW: And Beast has got to be one of the most fun characters to write.

ALASDAIR: He's the one that lets the writer show off his knowledge of words.

ANTONY: One of Morrison's strengths is his ability to write really good sarcastic dialogue. When you compare it to Casey's overblown, faux hip dialogue...

ALASDAIR: This is what Chris Ekman was saying in his Previews review. Morrison is not an establishment man; this is going to be a comic about taking the piss. Morrison's said INVISIBLES and JLA are thesis and antithesis. What he wants to build here is the synthesis. This is a group of people who don't believe in our current system because it doesn't work for them, and they're out to build another one.

ANTONY: This is the biggest success. Although I never would have thought I'd hear myself say it, this and THE BROTHERHOOD are the two best books in this line.

ANDREW: For me it's NEW X-MEN and X-FORCE.

ALASDAIR: Much as I hate to agree with the X-Men reader, I'm with him. BROTHERHOOD is number three. Don't ask me to rank the other two.

ANTONY: I think X-FORCE is the more technically accomplished of the two. There's just something about THE BROTHERHOOD that's a bit better.

ALASDAIR: What THE BROTHERHOOD signifies to me is better than what X-FORCE signifies. X-FORCE signifies that we're going to put out some better comics and they're not going to be aimed at kids. What THE BROTHERHOOD signifies is more thought provoking. I got into Vertigo because they were horror comics, and I like stories that are black, twisted and unpleasant. THE BROTHERHOOD has a big sign saying we're going to do black, twisted and unpleasant.

ANTONY: Two hits, one sort-of, two failures. We just disagree which one falls into the middle one.

ALASDAIR: A fifty percent success rate. Better than Marvel have been doing...

Wheeler, Johnston and Watson are the Ninth Art editorial board.

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