Story Title: Season of the Witch (part four of four)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Chris Bachalo
Inkers: Florea, Holdredge, Irwin, Mendoza, Olazaba, Parsons, Rapmund, Townsend & Vey
Colours: Studio F
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Associate Editor: Nick Lowe
Assistant Editor: Sean Ryan
Editor: Mike Marts
Oh Claremont Oh Claremont
How I loath thee,
You dare killed off Phoenix,
but you shall not get me.
Your Uncanny X-Men,
revels in obscurity,
Oh Claremont Oh Claremont,
go drive into a tree…
With apologies to the folk ballad ‘The Moonshiner
STORY!
First off, Claremont shocked me a few months ago with one or the more interesting bits of House of M. This story wasn’t so much a story within the House of M-verse itself, but dealing specificially with the cosmic ramifications of the 616 changing. It really has no need to be in House of M, and they could easily have thrown any ‘the timestream is screwed up’ bit in there to fit in the plot, but it doesn’t do this arc a disservice.
We have LOTS of other stuff for that. BUY A HONDA CIVIC
If you are going to read New Excalibur, then this book is obviously going to be a necessary checkbox on your ‘to read’ list. If only so you know how these characters all got tossed in the mix. If you don’t care, and are just waiting with baited breath for the standard universe return of Pete Wisdom, then just keep moving along. Do not though, under possibility of death, try and figure out exactly what happened in this story other than the big rift is closed up by Meghan.
Aww, I spoiled it. Sorry. Meghan dies. Then again, she doesn’t die.. she gets sucked into a void to be used later. Her sacrifice is going to motivate the rest of the team to form up and kick ass back in the normal-verse. Throughout the issue though, the story gets lost in the big fight. Where did Juggernaut come from? Weren’t we trying to find out why Nocturne was being chased by the HoM? How in the hell did Captain Britain find Psylocke?!
The story itself isn’t unreadable, which puts it marks above Claremonts other attempts recently, but in trying to create a new mythology for his new team, he lost the original point of his story.
ART!
I was so excited to hear that Bachalo was back on X-Men. Yeah, Alan Davis is nice and all, if you like that kind of thing, but man do I love me some Bachalo. (Yes, I know Alan Davis is great.. shut up) He gets lost in all of the !! EIGHT !! inkers though. One or two times, it’s hard to follow the panelwork, but it really looks like the problem with the issue is that it’s been inked and touched by nine hands including Bachalo’s.
It is nice to see his work back in X, and it is billions of times closer to what I remember than his work in the Age of Apocalypse event, but it’s not the Generation X love yet. Maybe with the END OF GREY storyline, it’ll get back there. We can hope.
OVERALL!
This is, in fact, not the greatest review I’ve ever done. Mainly because I couldn’t bear sitting and reading through the entire 4 issue HoM series to remember exactly all that’s going on in this story. It’s just muddled. Also add in the special treat of this book having more advertisements than I’ve ever seen in a comic book EVER, and it is more of a distraction and a number filler than it is a good showing of the medium. It would be like if right in the beginning of a review, I told you to buy a Honda Civic…
With END OF GREYS on the horizon, which sounds like it’s Claremont doing what he does best (messing with the family Summers-Grey) and New Excalibur debuting as well – maybe we’ll see a gift from the comic gods in some decent storytelling. I’m not exceptionally hopeful though.
