Monday, November 7, 2011

Generation X #32 (November 1997)

Next up on our tour of second tier mutant titles from the 90's, Generation X! Ah yes, Gen X... This was such a great teenage mutant book. This issue is written by Tom DeFalco, who I didn't know wrote for this series... Eh, let's give it a read and see what we've got here.

Generation X #32:

Summary: The story here is two part, the first(and easiest to review) deals mainly with Banshee, so I'll get that out of the way first. Banshee has headed to Muir Island to meet with Moria MacTaggert since M had split into two little girls... Ugh... I remember that... Anyway, Banshee was hoping that Moria could figure out why that happened to M, but upon seeing how hard Moria was pushing herself in her attempts to try to cure the Legacy Virus, Banshee instead asks Moria to go to a picnic(?!) with him. After some prodding, Moria agrees to go and the two share a kiss. Back at Gen X's headquarters, Husk feels the kids could use some time having fun what with the recent Operation: Zero Tolerance junk(trust me, it's not worth talking about...), as well as M splitting into two little girls. As such, Husk asks Emma Frost if the team could go to visit the circus(which was in town) and Emma reluctantly agrees to let them go. The rest of the Gen X kids aren't exactly keen on going to the circus, but Husk manages to convince them and before you know it the kids are visiting the circus. And since this is a comic book, it's not a regular circus, it's the Circus of Crime!!! The Ringmaster kind of/sort of wants to go straight and just run a normal circus show, but his underlings convince him to pull his regular con where he hypnotizes the audience with his hat(yes, his hat) while the rest of the Circus crew robs the customers. Naturally three Gen Xers(Husk, Chamber and Skin) are in the circus tent when the Ringmaster does his hypnotizing routine, but Husk is able to resist long enough to pull down Chamber's scarf, which leads to the Circus of Crime members moving to attack the three Gen Xers fearing the light that came from Chamber was a camera flash. Before long, Jubilee and Synch arrive at the tent and lend their three teammates a hand. After a short battle which results in the two trapezes artists accidentally crashing into each other, the Circus surrender, fully expecting the kids to turn them in to the authorities. Jubilee, seeing some of the Gen Xers in the Circus of Crime(Wha-huh?!), decides to let the off the hook provided the Ringmaster hands over his hypnotic hat and donates the proceeds of the show to a local charity. With that taken care of the kids head back home.

Thoughts: Well the main story was all kinds of weird... But as anybody who has visited this blog with any regularity probably knows, I am a HUGE sucker for b and c-list Marvel heroes and villains, and the frigging Circus of Crime most definitely fall in the c-list villains department. Sure, the ending with Jubes letting the Circus off the hook was a bit odd, but what the hey. While the story was a bit odd, I must say, the Emma Frost here? 700 times better than that terrible, bitchy Emma that we have skanking her way through the X-books nowadays... As opposed to the petty, self-caring pain in the ass she is now, she was actually a likable character here, one who obviously cared about her students... I sure wish THIS Emma would come back and send the current Emma back in time or something...

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.It's not just a circus, it's The Circus of Crime!!!!

4 comments:

  1. Generation X was a joy for me. That is, until the art started to get spotty. It was such a big jumo going from Bachalo to Dodson, but at least Dodson was good. Then near the end it was just inconsistent. It was that dark time of Marvel when all the X-books were going through that 'revelations' or 'revolutions' or whatever it was. Gen X met such an untimely end.

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  2. One thing that Gen X REALLY did right was the characterizations... Each character was different and interesting in their own way. As for the art, I think it was(especially in the beginning) VERY hit or miss. Basically it depended on what you thought of Bachalo's work, which could be... difficult to follow at times. And yeah, like you said, the way it came to an end, especially Synch's fate, was pretty pathetic... Out of the main characters in that series, only Monet made something of herself thanks to Peter David... As for the others, THREE are dead(Synch, Skin, Banshee), one is undead(Jubilee), one is nearly unrecognizable(Emma) and the rest haven't done anything of note in about 5 years(Chamber, Husk). That sucks because those characters deserved a much better fate than that.

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  3. DON't EVEN DARE CALL THE CURRENT FRAUD BITCH "EMMA FROST" !
    The Emma I'm a fan of is so cool that in AOA she performed a lobotomy to escape captivity by getting rid of her Psychic powers & joining the european council again the big A's forces ! She was so badass that she would kill to defend her students! That was the badass ex white queen not the coke-snorting , Cock sucking immature whore baldJunkie pulled out of his anus after 1 too many rushes!

    As For revolutions, well I loved Gambit, Cable & all the counter -x books which actually show some evolution & actual growth to the characters.
    Synch's death is truly tragic, yet the worst part is I think he was lucky to have been the focus of that story & that it affected all the others ( Hell even me! & Maggot 's demise in the camps, when he gives One of his slugs to that kid saying that a part of him would still live on? I unashamadely admit that made me teary... & I'm not that easy to crush ! Hell , I'm the guy who says meh to Bambi... wait maybe that's because I don't give a damn about it altogether?) . Synch's death should have been avoided, BUT pathetic? Noooooo.... at least he went out as a hero! He died diminishing the damage of the explosion!
    You really wanna talk pathetic?
    Skin , Jess Bedlam, Jean Grey, Emma Frost (that 's the only explanation!) Dead either Off panel or pathetically, while none of their friends gave a fuck (at least in the 90's when an x-man died, well there were repercussions!)
    This is why C-list characters deserve more & better treatment, Gen X & X-force are MY New X-men ! MWAHAHAAHAHAHAAAA!

    Saidi

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  4. For me though it was the fact that Synch SHOULDN'T have died, period. I don't care how it happened, I still profess to this day that he shouldn't have been killed. But then again(for me at least) there really aren't many cases where characters SHOULD be killed. I've always said, and I firmly believe that there are only three reasons a character should/is killed off... The first is that the writer is a lazy hack who thinks killing characters off will make their story more dramatic because he/she can't elicit emotion any other way. The second is to drum up sales/interest with a surprise death. The third is if there is absolutely NOTHING else that can be done with a character. They've reached their potential and not even the greatest writer in the world can make said character interesting again. Synch met NONE of those criteria! Gen X was almost definitely on it's way to cancellation when he was killed, so why not just leave him alive to see what some writers down the road can do with him. Needless deaths like that just irk me to no end... That is my #1 comic book pet peeve.

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