Hello there, Comics! The Sexlings! How were your weekends? Fruitful? Juicy? Supple? We hope so, because we want you to channel all that excitement into an appreciation for the incredible comics that came out last week. In our hearts, these were the best. We hope you like them, too.

UNCANNY RESEMBLANCES

The X-Men have always been a parable for real world civil rights, prejudice and feelings of isolation, and it’s an approach that has struck a chord with millions of people over the course of decades, including myself. The lasers and snikts probably help, too. However, with Uncanny X-Men #4, we got an extra layer this week as we not only got a story that touches on the overall story of the X-Men and their fight for survival, but an extra parable, one step removed, for the X-Men themselves.

When I first realized that the issue was an “X-Men Lite” story - to borrow and twist some Doctor Who terminology - I wasn’t sure what I would think of it. With an issue about a lone member of the Borg-like Phalanx alien race trying to contact its species so that they can, you know… take over the Earth, it could have very easily just been a story about how a monster that doesn’t realize it’s a monster has to be destroyed by some of the Marvel Universe’s mightiest heroes. Instead, what we got was a surprisingly touching story about loneliness, despair and how one responds to it. In the wake of M-Day, the mutants are an endangered species and we have gotten several years of excellent stories resulting from that. However, at this point it’s very difficult for an established reader to step back and appreciate the sheer horror of being part of an endangered species, simply by virtue of it having been the status quo for as long as it has. With this lone Phalanx, however, we can get enough difference that the emotion feels real and earned within the story. The alien doesn’t really want to do the horrible things it has to so that it can rejoin its species, just like the X-Men and X-Force have done to stay alive. It appreciates the awfulness of what it’s doing, but… this is about survival. What else can it do?

Throughout the course of the issue, Kieron Gillen and Brandon Peterson do a spectacular job of creating empathy with the Phalanx. Its loneliness and desperation are palpable in a way that it can’t often be for the X-Men anymore, and with the realization that it truly is the last of its kind, that it can’t do anything to not be alone, it takes a final fateful action. To me, it was a chilling reminder of what it might have felt like in the wake of M-Day, or in the following years of failure to reignite the mutant species. It would have been easy for the X-Men to give up at any point along the way, faced with a reality like that. It makes it more impressive that they didn’t, and especially impressive that Gillen and Peterson were able to invoke that kind of emotion six years after House of M. In Uncanny X-Men #4, they’ve created a mirror for the X-Men that makes even the team’s victory in the end of the issue a bittersweet one for the reader. The heroes win, but a species dies. It’s hard to feel good after that, considering how much like the X-Men the “villain” really was. Could things have gone differently if they’d just managed to communicate? We’ll never know, and I’ve spent at least one late night being troubled by that.

Kieron and Brandon, you’ve earned the I Want To Believe Award. (J)

INDEFATIGABLE

I find that it’s hard to have fun. When you want to go out and mess shit up a bit, or stay in and mess shit up a bit, you have to make a conscious choice and put in the effort to do so. That doesn’t seem like much, but its an infinite amount of work compared to the energies required to have an entirely unremarkable evening. To be unremarkable, the only thing a person has to do is exist. That’s it.

Having fun also comes with its own set of risks. Just by attempting to have it, you run the risk of experiencing something horrible. Get it right, and the payoff is sweet. Get it wrong, and the payoff is shit. When you don’t take a risk, you’re left with a passable effort that will get you by in a pinch. It’ll do, but it’ll never be spectacular. And dammit, don’t we all want to be a little fucking spectacular?

The current run of Defenders is one of those rare books where things all seem to work out nicely. On paper, it shouldn’t work. It’s a fun book (which people don’t tend to like because “they’re not taking this seriously enough”) featuring characters that - while somewhat popular in their own right - can’t carry the weight of a book on their own, more often than not. But then Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson aren’t fucking around. They’ve devised a book with a clear mandate of fun, and they’re playing it to the hilt, as evidenced by one of the best escape scenes I’ve ever witnessed. (Seriously, Doc Strange cranks up the James Spader dial to 11, which isn’t a thing anyone really wants to fully contemplate.)

In addition, the book is very seriously following a legitimate threat. There’s a sense of stakes to the proceedings, which plays off nicely with the lighter tone, giving it that nice Whedon-smoked flavour of the ridiculous jutting up to the horrific. If we could get more of this (on a long term, ongoing basis) that would be absolutely fantastic.

And thus, this week’s second issue of Defenders earns itself the Doc Strange Just Wants to Have Fun Award. But really, let’s not think to hard about what that would look like. (B)

I am an exceptional late arrival to Criminal and the comics produced by the team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, especially considering my enjoyment of both Brubaker‘s other comics and the world of film noir and hard-boiled detective fiction. Last of the Innocent finally brought me into the know, so I was incredibly excited to get my hands on Fatale #1 this week to see what the two would do next.

In the backmatter of the print edition of the issue, Brubaker talks about how Fatale is an older idea that he had, but one that took years to come together before it could be told properly. After reading it, I believe him. The different ideas and genres in which he and Phillips are working here are ones that are finicky and difficult to combine. Just a hair in the wrong direction and it could have all gone wrong. Combining crime fiction and horror could have easily become a cheesy pastiche of the genres and never have rung true to the reader. Too far in the other direction and it could have come off as a Hellboy or BPRD knockoff. Instead, the two have created an eerie, bewitching comic that feels like the next logical step in their ongoing collaboration.

The line to Fatale from a book like Criminal isn’t hard to see. The smoke-filled bars, the corrupt cops, the murder and intrigue… it’s familiar even to someone as new to the pair’s comics like me. However, sitting at the periphery of my vision is something else, something far more sinister than the crime mysteries I’m familiar with. Something is off in the world of Fatale, and it peeks in and out without ever giving itself away.

This all centres around Josephine, a woman with a power over men who doesn’t appear to age. It’s a pleasant and surprising spin on the idea of the femme fatale, a timeless familiarity made literally so. She appears in men’s lives and unwillingly casts a spell over them, compelling them to seek and help her out. However, she’s under the power of someone else, and something even darker lives in her world. So far, we’ve seen hints at it, details that swirl in the mind and grow in their malignance. Fatale is a comic that gives details sparingly and the effect is that it creates unease and fear. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It can’t be good. I’m afraid to find out, but I can’t wait, either.

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