Reviewer: Will Cooling
Story Title: Are You Ready?
Written by: Peter Milligan
Art by: Mike Allred
Colored by: Laura Allred
Lettered by: Nate Piekos
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel Knights/Marvel
What was X-Statix?
Irony was always there with satire never far behind. Greed and hypocrisy were often to the fore as was a sardonic sense of mischief that perverted many of the classic icons of Marvel such as Spider-Man, Wolverine and The Avengers.
If that’s what you came to this final issue expecting then you’re going to be disappointed.
A less self-aware, more bombastic writer would use this issue to show how his babies were right all along. How the capitalist, egotistical and ultimately selfish and shallow approach to superheroics that X-Force/X-Statix took has been proven right over the 40-plus issues they presided over (flashback to the beyond awful end to Millar’s run on the Authority). Milligan knows better. Today’s market is full of nostalgia-motivated relaunches included one of the very X-Force franchise his motley band first superceded. All of them offer the conventional superheroics, the love of the flag and testosterone fueled adventures that Milligan and Allred tried to rebel against offering the lure of cold hard cash and champagne parties as a more realistic motivation. However, despite the fact the latter motivation is truer and more relevant it is the conventional fare that sells with X-Statix lagging behind. The conclusion is stark and obvious…the people actually like their conventional superheroes who fight for pride and honour. X-Statix are in short passé.
And they know it.
So we come to this bittersweet closing story after the team split up due to their sense of uniqueness and radicalism being shattered by the respect shown to them by the ultimate conservative superhero group-The Avengers. With the leaving party in full swing the five remaining members making their solo plans; Venus looking to amass the money to ensure she’ll never be poor again, Guy and Tyke looking to avoid the fate of the previous X-Force group of which he is the only survivor, Dead Girl striving not to loose face in front of her living comrades and Stuart looking to get some tail. However, they receive a fateful phone-call offering them one last easy payday in defeating a bunch of anarchists that have occupied a rich guy’s home.
This is not X-Statix, as Tyke points out they are no longer fighting for the fame and kicks but simply money as if having decided they couldn’t adopt the morality of conventional superheroes they’ll give supervillain morality one go. Gone too are the cameras and with them the friction between Tyke and Guy. Tyke had only ever been the leader for the cameras and when their gone the former leader and conscience of X-Statix that is Mr. Sensitive takes command once again with disastrous consequences. The friction between the two leading ladies is gone as well with Dead Girl cheerfully admitting that her looks had blown the type of Playboy deal that Venus has just received.
So with all that gone what is left?
Well the characters…these characters that have together amassed a 26-issue run that has featured some good issues (Issues 19/20 are my personal favourites), some bad issues (Issue 10 springs to mind) and some ugly ones (the editorial mangled Issues 13-18) but never dull ones. Similar to The Authority, much of the credit for the enjoyment for these issues has gone to the unique take on superheroes adopted by the creative team yet as with The Authority such credit is misplaced. X-Statix has always been to a degree not acknowledged by most about the characters in particularly the two leading figures Tyke and Guy. Milligan returns to these characters for one final time to give them the send of they deserve as they adversity for one final time. As some of the best moments of this series they are superb character moments as Milligan wraps this pulsating and emotional farewell in the type of unabashed humanity and naturalism that fully undermines this title’s claim to be a Bretchian subversion of superheroes and the media. With Mike Allred’s back on top form with some superb pop-art pages with the detail and largeness back into his work that had at times been lacking in this series’ later stages this marks an atypical send off for this title but a rewarding and apt send off for the characters whose story it told.
A perfect end to a proudly imperfect run…
The Final Word: Although Milligan retains some quirky elements with an inventive narrative structure this as traditional an issue as X-Statix ever delivered with the pop culture satiric bite left out to allow the characters a deservedly emotional send off and to underline the futility of subverting conventional superheroics in comics.
