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Sunday, January 26, 2003
I'd like to make this entry about the comic book Gen 13. Those of you uninterested in this type of topice, feel free to skip this one. I've been a regular reader of this comic book since 1995 or so. I'd grown to love Fairchild, Freefall, Rainmaker, Grunge and Burnout. (In that order, but not necessarily the same type of love for each...) But I need to be frank: Arcudi and Frank killed the line. Frank's art changed the look of the comic, from dynamic and lively to static and well, boring. Arcudi's storylines lost the fun and I think, the appeal, of the series. Gen 13 was more about fun than seriousness, and Arcudi just filled the line with drama when he took over. So I was relieved when they left the book. I believe Scott Lobdell was next given the reigns of the line. I thought he was successful in bringing back the fun of Gen 13. But, I must admit, there were times when he took this lack of seriousness a little too far. (I.E. Issue #50 had characters referring to themselves existing only in comic books.) I read the complaints of one prominent fan, and I understood her position, but I held on through Arcudi and Frank, so I'd stick with Lobdell, especially since I loved Ed Benes pencils. Then I heard Adam Warren would be writing the book. I don't know how to tell you how pleased this made me! Warren wrote possibly the best story arc for Gen 13: Bootleg, "Grunge: The Movie." And his stories did not disappoint. I loved Gen 13 again, but apparently the general public did not. Issue sales stayed low, until Jim Lee made the decision to cancel the book. Warren literally blew up the team, with only Caitlin surviving as some non-corporeal entity, composed of the Gen-Active entities of her teammates. In the last issue, Warren wrote of his disappointment with having the comic book cancelled, and how he never got to finished a storyline he gave a one-page start to (it would have become a large-scale story focusing heavily on Rainmaker). I was still wondering about all the other loose-ends never tied-up. The killer at UCSD, Lynch's transformation into an obese hospital patient at an undisclosed location, Caitlin's debt owed to Ivana. Now we have a new series called "Gen 13," only it's nothing like theseries of old. I just read up to issue 5, having put off reading any of it simce August 1st, when I met the man behind the stories: Chris Claremont. I met him at the Comic Con International, signing free issues of Gen 13 #0. I intended to ask him if he would ever finish those storylines, but he was still talking about how he found it odd that the shortest X-Man, Wolverine, was the tallest member in the movie, and how the tallest, Storm, was the shortest in the movie. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for Claremont, and he was completely polite with me, but I got a sinking sensation that I would never get the answersfor these questions. And to top it off, he hadn't managed to find the last issues of the original ongoing series, so he wasn't sure what happened. And to some extent, it shows. Fairchild is alive and well, a human as we've always known her, though she's now some vice-principal of a New York high school secretly keeping an eye on these super-beings who keep popping up. She seems older to me, like in her late 20s or early 30s, even though she remained about 21 throughout the earlier series, and only months have passed in the comic timeline. Maybe I'm just interpreting it wrong. I've read six issues, and not once have I read the phrase "gen-active." The new characters are given powers by some bad guy named Herod, who will apparently judge them later on, causing them to "flash." (Near as I can tell, die with some high amount of released energy.) The super-beings are referred to as "genies," though I have no idea why. There's no mention of Ivana, Lynch, or anyone else who may link the storylines better together. (Yet. I'm still willing to give Claremont the benefit of the doubt.) The book itself is not a bad read, and it's fairly interesting at times. But it's not within the defined rules that created Gen 13 and Deviants. (Though the premise that the gen-actives were the childrem of Team 7 seemed to have disappeared from later issues of the original series, too.) I would have rather given this book an entirely new title, and if they had to make a new Gen 13, then use the gen-actives Fairchild & Co. got to know and befriend near the end of the first series. Wow, I rarely make substantial entries, much less something as long as this...
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| The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of Phillip Donnelly. Unless explicitly stated, all statements are those of Phillip Donnelly. So there! |
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