Reviewers: Jesse Baker& Dave Graham
Story Title: Sacred Vows Part 2
Written by: Chuck Austen
Penciled by: Phillip Tan
Inked by: NA
Colored by: Avalon Studios
Lettered by: Russ Wooten
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics
The Review
Jesse: The term “hack writer” is thrown around a lot when describing Chuck Austen and UXM #426 provides ample fire for critics of Chuck’s writing in regards to this label.
Dave: Harsh words. Care to elaborate?
Jesse: Chuck had a “soap opera” storyline already set with Husk/Angel/Stacy that he could have used for the wedding arc and he threw that story away for the Annie/Havok/Polaris thing that only Chuck Austen gives a care about. It (the Angel, Husk, and Stacy triangle) had all the ingredients for a good storyline: a character everyone hated (Stacy), a beloved female character people could root for (Husk), and a male character that doesn’t come off as having his personality hijacked just to suit the storyline.
Dave: While I certainly agree that the Warren / Stacy / Paige story would have worked well – I think that alternative route he has taken is no less interesting.
Jesse: The only way this could be interesting is if Mutant X Havok is running around in Havok’s body and purposely trying to ruin Havok’s life. Granted this is still a possibility, but it is the only way this could make sense.
Dave: Where’s the part that doesn’t make sense? Havok comes back in a coma, wakes up with feelings about his nurse (ignore for a minute their origin), and his ex-fiancé jumps at the chance to force him down the aisle. Sounds like a good soap-style story to me.
Jesse: The big problem is that from a reader’s prospective, the whole thing comes off as extremely contrived and more of a writer wanting to ramrod his new toy into the picture regardless of logic and reason. After all, why should we care for Nurse Annie? Because Austen says we are supposed to? And why should we hate Polaris? Because Austen suddenly decides she has to be the bitch in order to justify Havok leaving her?
Dave: I love Annie – I think she’s a fish out of water, a person torn between her negative feelings about mutant-kind and her X-gene positive son. Austen has also used her well, examining the other characters through their interactions with her. And we should hate Polaris because she is mentally unstable – as proved by the whole attempted murder thing.
Jesse: You are right on that part (having Annie play devil’s advocate for other characters) but the rest is WAY too contrived for my taste especially the way Chuck handled Havok dumping Polaris. As for Polaris’s reaction, her boyfriend just left her for her stalker. Would you be pissed if your girlfriend did the same to you?
[Note at this point, Jesse realized that he said “her stalker†as opposed to “his stalkerâ€]
Jesse: His stalker, not her stalker. Though that would have been interesting to have seen Havok leave Polaris at the alter for a man.
Dave: Now that would have been something interesting
Jesse: Yeah, I could see it now: “Lorna, I’ve decided to stop living the lie and come out of the closet. But not for you Northstar or Bobby. I’m doing it for my fiancé’s stalker.â€
Jesse: And Iceman, Polaris, Northstar, and Annie going “DAMN IT!!!!†in unison.
Dave: Now THAT would make for a good X-book. And yes there is something contrived in the way that the Alex switches between Polaris and Annie, although it has been building in the same way it does in a good old-fashioned RomCom, except for the whole business of the mutant son.
Jesse: RomCom? What’s that?
Dave: Romantic Comedy.
Jesse: I could handle the switch if Austen had it done two other ways: have Alex and Lorna get together only to find out that they’ve grown too far apart to be together and part ways mutually, freeing Alex to get with Annie with Lorna’s blessing (which would have helped ease Annie into the book more) or have Jean bring Gambit and not a Gambit look alike to Lorna’s bachelorette party, have Lorna and Gambit do the nasty, and then have either Jean, Annie, or Rogue expose Lorna and Gambit to Alex. Not only would it have succeeded Operation: Make the readers hate Lorna but it would have given Claremont something to do with Gambit and Rogue in Xtreme X-Men for when they come back.
Dave: I’m not sure that the reader needs to hate Lorna, I just think they need to understand Alex’s quandary and be content with his decision. But it WOULD have made for an interesting story in Xtreme. The only real problem I have with the story in this issue is the last page, which feels a little too rushed.
Jesse: Same here, as well as the ambiguity as to what happened to Polaris after Cain hit her.
Dave: Yeah, that too.
Jesse: Did Xavier lock her up in Proteus’s old prison cell again? (Old X-Men reference there.)
Dave: Yeah.
Jesse: Speaking of which, I was surprised that Cain didn’t get that much air time in this issue.
Dave: Very true – and by the way I miss Sammy the Squidboy too. Now there was a character with potential.
Jesse: Given Chuck’s fondness of the character, I was suprised he got very little screen time. And Sammy’s coming back.
Dave: At least Cain made an impact in the end though.
Jesse: Yeah, I though that was cool.
Dave: I can feel a quirky buddy comedy in this books future.
Jesse: I guess Polaris was so wrapped up with having “here comes the bride†in her head, she didn’t sense Juggy coming.
Dave: That’s enough to drive anyone nuts.
Jesse: Part of me hopes that Chuck is allowed to give the Sam storyline closure lest another writer jacks the storyline up by having Juggy turn evil on Sam. But speaking of the wedding storyline, one thing I bet is going on after this issue is Grant Morrison crying in his cornflakes over how he won’t be able to use Polaris and Havok now. He desperately wanted Lorna and Alex to be in New X-Men when he took over the book.
Dave: I can understand him wanting Alex, but Lorna too?
Jesse: Yeah and given what’s happened in NXM, I can probably assume he wanted them to be in NXM so that they could annoy Scott and Jean with their perfect relationship ala Marcy and Steve Rhodes on Married With Children
Dave: Now there’s a disturbing thought – Married With Children in the pages of New X-Men written by Grant Morrison.
Jesse: Yeah, though with Morrison Jean would be Al and Scott would be Peggy. I can see it now:
“Jean, why won’t you put on the Black Queen uniform and have sex with meâ€?
“Scott, the game is on. Besides, we’re married. Married people don’t have sex.”
Dave: Once again, I’m finding myself very disturbed
Jesse: Then my job here is done :-)
Dave: Okay, bring us back to the issue – what’d you think of Tan’s art?
Jesse: Loved it
Dave: Same here
Jesse: The only art problem I had with the issue is them incorporating Magneto’s costume into Polaris’s gown.
Dave: Yeah, kind of a weird one that.
Jesse: I wish that Tan had Polaris change into her Metal Bikini costume from X-Factor, as a sort of an easter egg to those of us who know about it being Quesada’s costume redesign from when he drew X-Factor.
Dave: Wow – lot of fanboy in one sentence
Jesse: Well Chuck Austen is writing the book in a manner for us old time fans
Dave: Very true.
Jesse: Even though he hasn’t said anything, his writing is a throw-back to the Scott Lobdell/Fabian N. days of the early 90s before Bob Harras sucked their creativeness dry.
Dave: Which is why it complements Morrison’s “new” approach…
Jesse: And offers an alternative to Claremont’s pathetically bad hack writing in X-treme X-Men.
Dave: There’s a case where I think the word hack is deserved.
Jesse: Yeah, I gave up on the book after a couple of issues.
Dave: Same here, although I pick up the occasional issue to see if it’s getting any better.
Jesse: I am currently buying the book now, what with Igor doing the art and Gambit and Thunderbird being gone. But I swear it’s still painful to read with the presence of Sage in the book.
Dave: I picked up the first issue of the GLMK 2 story – but I wasn’t too impressed, although Igor did some nice work.
Jesse: Yeah, it was really good art.
Jesse: I still swear that Sage has to be the most annoying character ever to be seen in an X-Book. She makes Wolverine and Batman both look modest.
Dave: Nice comparison.
Jesse: And his explanation as to why Tessa is now an X-Man was utter tripe. “She’s the Sixth founding member of the X-Men! Only you never, EVER saw her in the original comics because she was always off-panel!”
Dave: Now there is something that makes perfect sense.
Jesse: Right, as was her “I turned Beast into a Beauty and the Beast look-alike!” storyline.
Dave: I think that I missed that one.
Jesse: Around XXM 3, when Beast was being shipped back to New X-Men after getting injured she uses her storyline advancement powers to evolve Beast into a form that could help him survive his injuries.
Dave: Yes, I remember now – *shudder*. But on the plus side, big fluffy blue cat now.
Jesse: You like B&TB Beast?
Dave: I wouldn’t go that far.
Jesse: I hated it at first but I’ve slowly warmed to it.
Dave: The only thing I really like about it is the fact that it suits his seudo-gay / intellectual personality.
Jesse: I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that is a pretty interesting way to look at it.
Dave: Talking about “secondary mutations”, what do you make of Havok’s new power?
Jesse: The cannonball type blasting power?
Dave: Yup.
Jesse: I thought it was kind of interesting. I never would have expected anyone to try to have Havok use his power like that.
Dave: Yeah, it was an interesting idea – and worked quite well within the issue.
Jesse: By the way, you think that Chuck may be positioning Bobby to pick up Lorna on the rebound with the comments about Lorna and Bobby’s fight made by Alex?
Dave: He could very well be – if Northstar doesn’t get his claws in him first.
Jesse: Speaking of Northstar, I was kind of sad that we never got to see Northstar and Stacy X ever interact any. Given their personalities, their verbal sparrings could have been pure gold.
Dave: It would have made for some interesting conversations. BTW do we know if Stacy is coming back?
Jesse: I doubt it. Everyone hates her, Chuck only kept her around to try and make people like her, and the dialogue from when she left seemed to indicate she was gone for good. Especially given how Chuck has gone on the record as saying he considers Angel to be his main POV character for the book.
Dave: The idea of having Warren as the central character in the book is intriguing.
Jesse: Yeah, especially since losing the metal wings the character has been in desperate need of a massive revamp. Ever since they had him get his feather wings back, Angel has been pretty one-dimensional (Psylocke relationship aside).
Dave: Yeah, although he has fleshed out a bit recently
Jesse: I know. That’s one good thing Chuck has done, make Angel more of a fully developed character. And restored Nightcrawler back to his old self
Dave: Yeah, he does seem to be restoring order
Jesse: The only real hole in the team is Iceman, who seems stuck on “perpetual child” mode.
Dave: Very true -but I think there’s lots of scope in him becoming “more ice than man”. It COULD lead to some nice character building stuff.
Jesse: Yeah, but given how every X-writer swears on a stack of bibles that they will evolve Iceman and never do it, I’ll see it when I believe it.
Dave: He does seem to be the perpetual child of the team
Jesse: Personally I think he should hook up with Nurse Annie give that they are doing the angle of her playing the Xander Harris “teller of truths to people who don’t want to see it” role. It would give Chuck a means to have Iceman grow and Annie a person to get with to overcome her mutant phobias while not being an obsessed stalker.
Dave: I like that idea, especially given that she’s got a child. I certainly could see some scope in that story – but I like Annie and Alex for the moment.
The Big Finish
Jesse: What are your final thoughts on this issue?
Dave: I think that it was a solid issue that built upon the events of the last issue. The art is great, and whilst there are some story problems, the issue works well. 7.0
Jesse: A bad issue that provides a bad ending rather than a good ending. Chuck had two soap opera-type love triangles to use for the wedding arc and he chose the one that was filled with plot devices and writer favoritism to run with than one that was simpler and fit the profile for the story he wanted to tell. I give it a 1.0, mainly do to the art being the only redeeming feature of this issue.
The 411 .::. It just goes to show that no two people have the same taste when it comes to reading material, especially when said reading material is an X-Title.
Final Score: 4.0
