X-Statix #9 Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: The Diary of Edie Sawyer

Written by: Peter Milligan
Pencilled by: Philip Bond
Inked by: N/A
Colored by: Laura Allred
Lettered by: Blambot’s Nate Piekos
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Once upon a time there was a book called X-Force, which in the year 2000 was handed to Warren Ellis to be revamped. Ellis proceeded to take a dump on the book and scorched earth the title with his highly masturbatory stories featuring the international super-spy Pete Wisdom while the members of X-Force were part of the scenery in the background. So badly did Ellis ruin X-Force that Marvel was forced to completely cut their loses with the title and gave Peter Milligan and Mike Allred free reign to introduce a new set of characters and a new status quo totally divorced from the X-Force/New Mutants formula. Their final product was a new corporate sponsored super-hero team that took the concept of being super-heroes and celebrities and ran with it. While this idea was nothing new (it was the basis of the Image series Youngblood), Milligan and Allred took this concept and ran with it further than Rob Liefeld ever did in the pages of Youngblood.

The star of this new team and new direction was Edith Sawyer, AKA U-Go Girl. A teleportor with a flippant attitude the likes of which we had never seen in a mutant before, U-Go Girl quickly became a big hit with readers. She was a mutant who didn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself or cry about how oppressed she was. She was a mutant who wanted to be famous and adored and was able to be famous and adored with her charm and wit. She was the type of breakout character that immediately made people forget about the old X-Force and embrace the new status quo right off the bat.

Unfortunately this was something that the pair of Allred and Milligan didn’t like. They wanted “The Orphan”, a character that symbolized everything WRONG with the X-Men franchise in terms of clichéd characteristics and manufactured angst, to be the star of the book. So U-Go Girl was killed off, but not before giving Guy Smith the “rub” by being his lover, and replaced with Venus DeMilo, who was immediately turned from a vain, female version of Wildfire into a bland, non-offensive version of U-Go Girl who spends all of her time whining about why The Orphan doesn’t love her and how she can’t have sex with him because of her status as an energy being.

This decision has made X-Statix a horrible book, with Venus and The Orphan being rammed down the reader’s throats non-stop, and with the rest of the X-Statix characters being shoved into the background where all they do is say “Where’s The Orphan?” or “Why is Venus so depressed?”. Milligan even buried a cool story idea where two members of X-Statix pretend to be a gay couple in order to get media attention during the last year of the book just to focus the sole spotlight of The Orphan trying to bed Venus DeMilo while whining about how unfair it was that U-Go Girl died on him.

So after a storyline that had basically revolved around him, Milligan and Allred baited and switched us readers with the removal of The Orphan (with the character finally turning evil), we get the return of U-Go Girl in a flashback story. I take it with the book going on hiatus for the next two months in order to set up the Wolverine/Doop mini-series, Milligan decided to toss the readers a bone and give us a solo tale involving the character as a glorified filler story.

The issue begins with Venus DeMilo and The Orphan cleaning out U-Go Girl’s room, tossing all of Edith’s things into the garbage so that they can have a romantic candle-lit dinner in the room. Venus, in her usual whiney mode, compliments The Orphan about being so sensitive and self-absorbed when he bitches her out when she tries to stop him from smelling a bourbon-smelling t-shirt of hers. She then tells him to leave the room, but not before she apologizes for telling him off for being such a jerk and finds Edith’s diaries, which lead into our flashback story.

The U-Go Girl story begins with her arriving in Hollywood on her 19th birthday and tells of how she became a member of X-Statix. We see her becoming lovers with a young struggling writer. We learn after a couple of months of being together that her boyfriend finally lands a big break when he gets a studio executive to look at the movie script that he’s been working on non-stop for the last couple of months. But things go to hell when he is told point-blank that for his script to be bought by the studio, he has to let the executive have sex with Edith. Edith tells both guys to get bent and decides to become a profession villain. But after a couple of heists which go unnoticed, Edith decides to become a hero after a chance meeting with Zeitgeist, who brings Edith onto the new X-Force team. The story ends with Edith making her grand debut as a super-hero and how she vomited due to her drinking during hours before she made her grand entrance.

The issue ends with Venus about to burn the diaries but as we see her and The Orphan eating in Edith’s empty room, we see the diaries safely hidden away inside of the closet. This creates the opportunity for future flashback stories starring U-Go Girl, but it doesn’t solve the problem her needless death created in the first place.