|
Happy Holidays, everyone, and welcome back to another
new Great X-Pectations. This month is going to be a big
departure from the usual ranting, and have a bit more fun, with
the X-Geek’s Top Ten Christmas Wish List. As written by me.
- A New X-Men that has a stable creative team, at least
holding on to one artist for a single story arc, and with the ability
to have the book come out in a timely fashion. I considered
asking for Morrison off the book, but it is indeed hard to argue
with the sales, so I just won’t read it.
- The Phoenix miniseries. This was in the works a little
while ago, under the Icons line of limited series, and has just
completely fallen apart and will now very likely never see the
light of day as it was originally conceived, which is a shame.
Chamber, who hadn’t even been an X-Man for a year at the
time, was given an Icons miniseries, but one of the original five,
often referred to as the heart of the team, and never actually
having her own solo series, gets nothing? What a rip-off.
- Speaking of the Phoenix, could someone travel to the
Marvel Universe and get me a gift-wrapped Rachel Summers to
put under my tree on December 24th? Or if you’re female, pick
yourself up a nice Gambit, or Nightcrawler, I suppose.
- X-Men Super Ultra Special Platinum Limited Mega
Edition DVD. Or something like that. I want the re-edited,
rescored movie, as Bryan Singer originally envisioned it, with the
new footage we keep hearing about them filming, the better
character driven story, with audio commentary, some behind the
scenes features, and some other fun stuff. We were sort of
promised this version, but they changed their mind and they’re
just giving us the old film with a few more special features. At
least there will be the audio commentary.
- More Essential X-Men TPBs. I personally haven’t
bought any, but these large, B&W collections of classic comics
are an excellent idea, and a very inexpensive way for someone
to read up on all the merry mutants, and would be welcome on
any X-Geek’s shelf, I’m sure.
- Fiiiive golden riiiiings!! Er, I mean... Keep manga away
from the X-Men, please? I know some folks like it, but it just
doesn’t fit. It looks silly, cartoonish, and makes the X-Men
look like caricatures. And manga art really doesn’t work with
American writing. Manga is the whole package, not just the art.
- Remember continuity? Remember consistency? Can we
bring these back into the Marvel books in general, and the X-
Titles in particular? Things have stopped making sense, between
books, sometimes within themselves, and mostly with what has
gone before. I’m not saying these things should be a shackle,
but if Marvel wants to have a Universe, things have to hold
together. And right now, they’re not.
- X-Treme X-Men back up as the top X-Men title it should
be! C’mon folks, this is Claremont back (Almost) at the top of
his game! This book deserves to be doing a lot better than it is.
Good writing, excellent, gorgeous art, solid characters that don’t
act like unlikable assholes, acting like themselves even, and the
only book really trying to make everything going across the other
titles. Yeah, back to that consistency thing again.
- It’s again long past time to clean out the X-Books.
We’ve got way too many titles again, after the line got
streamlined. Most of them are new ones, or new directions for
old ones, started after the last cleansing. Nice try guys, better
luck next time! Let’s get Rob Weinberg back on Cable, and get
that book’s sales back up, eh?
- Any fan would love their least-favorite creator’s head gift-
wrapped for them. I’ll take a Scott Lobdell, and a Rob Liefeld,
please!
For some slightly more serious suggestions, there’s tons of
calendars out there, the X-Men Monopoly game (Although, X-
Men and Monopoly always seemed like an odd fit to me),
limited edition art prints, lithographs - I just saw a very nice
Death of Phoenix one by Jae Lee that I personally want - the
new X-Men fighting game . . . It’s a good time to be an X-Fan, at
least merchandise-wise.
|
