Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
House of Awesome!, 30 Aug 2006
This is a wicked comic.
It's pretty Twilight Zone in execution. Basically Wanda Maximoff alters reality and the X-Men and Avengers have to sort out the resulting mess.
The book opens strongly and continues in this fashion. Much care has been taken to ensure that reader understands that there is a lot at stake here.
My only gripes are that there are a lot of characters (having not been reading comics for as long as I'm gussing Marvel's target audience have) who I don't know or would like to have seen more of - such as She-Hulk. Also the panel layout is very epic. Single panels often strech across both pages and it is often unclear as to what I should be reading next. This happened a lot to me through out the reading. I was reading down when I should have been reading across.
That said there is some really lavish artwork, such as Wolverine's daring motorbike jump across a junction and the first formal introduction of the House of M itself.
A really cool comic. I'd be very sad if the Hulk and Spiderman books just show the characters in their alternate reality because I feel this story's strong enough to continue for a while on it's own.
I've ordered the Excalibur prelude from Amazon but it's taking it's time. I'd like to read that before I buy any of the later books. But I think I will get the next few since the first was so good.
This is definatly worth a read if you like this kind of thing.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting ideas, poorly executed, 10 April 2009
As a mature fan of the Marvel Universe with a strong grounding in Silver Age, Bronze age, late eighties/early nineties and recent story arcs, I found this limited series disappointing to say the least. This was frustrating, as in the right hands, this would have been a fantastic piece of work, especially considering how important it is in re-setting the absurd number of mutants in the Marvel universe back to a reasonable number.
The biggest problem is the art. Coipel displays the influence of Moebius (well, he would, as he's French) and that's no bad thing, as this is detectable even in the art of the superb yet quirky Frank Quitely. While this means that the draughtsmanship depicting buildings etc is attractive, Coipel's figure style is apalling - he has a tendency to foreshorten and bulk up characters who are traditionally (and correctly in my view) lithe rather than blocky, consequently making them appear like sweaty wrestlers as opposed to the apollonian titans we're used to. His Captain America is absurdly squat and pumped, while (in the same splash panel), the much more powerful She-Hulk is positively slender. Even worse, his rendering of faces is just dreadful - characters with clearly defined facial identities are unrecognisable and crudely depicted. Is this just style, or just bad drawing> Take a look at (for example) Buscema's Avengers, then look at Coipels - yeah, his 'style' is just plain bad. How did such a terrible, inconsistent penciller get selected for such an important storyline? Making characters instantly recognisable out of costume is the first golden rule of good superhero pencilling and Coipel struggles to make a character look like the same person from one panel to the next.
On to Bendis, who is usually a competent writer at the very least, and sometimes excellent (I'll stop short of claiming he's brilliant, as he hasn't quite made it in that respect in my opinion, especially when compared to Brubaker, whose current run on Captain America is state-of-the-art mainstream superhero comic). Here, he seems to be writing to editorial order, and aside from the few big moments of revelation (which are Ok in themselves, but not very subtly done), he seems to be lacking lightness of touch and the humanity he usually pours into work like New Avengers. The reactions of Spider-Man to the plot scenario are interesting, but under-examined (and Bendis writes Spidey well normally), while Wolverine and his fellow X-Men are on hand to spout the cliches they are always over-reliant upon.
Having criticised Bendis, I'll add that I would have enjoyed this a lot more if Coipel hand't been involved. If you like strong, consistent penciling and an artist who understands anatomy, then avoid him. If you like a stylist who is consistent, go with Quitely, whose strangeness is offset by his originality and consistency.
To sum up for contemporary readers, this is not a patch on Mark Millar's 'Civil War' or the first two hardcover volumes of 'New Avengers', and ranks somewhere lower than 'Avengers Disassembled', another story that should have felt much more important than it did - the hand of editorial control being exercised too tightly again?
It's a shame that the First Family of Mutantkind - noble, arogant, fascinating - continue to be depicted so poorly by bad artists and writing that treats them with so little respect. Magneto, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch have been overexposed for years and their mystique is almost lost. Shame - they were long my favourite Marvel characters and it saddens me to see them handled so uninpsiringly here.
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
ryans review, 25 May 2006
Wow,great story,great art work.Having only been reading x-men for 4 years, i found this new twist a bold refreshing move.
The story is based around Wanda Maximof (the Scarlet Witch, Whose powers have been rarely used in recent x-men books)having a break down and putting the world in jeopody. professor x calls a meeting of avengers (old and new) and the x-men,they decide something must be done .They decide to confront the Scarlet witch and the world changes, to a world were mutants rule and humans obey.
Good to see the Vision in the book, explains why Wanda was flirting with a machine at the end of The Ultimates 2.
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