Review – Uncanny X-Men 544
How do you end a series that started in 1963; that for a generation or more defined the American superhero genre like no other, and that is the only one of the Silver Age Marvel series still being published in its original volume and numbering?
And do you do it differently if you know that you're relaunching it the following month?
I'm not sure what writer Kieron Gillen would have done with the version of Uncanny X-Men #544 in the first situation, because he finds himself squarely in the second, and the 'final' issue of Uncanny he's opted for probably wisely sets the stage for what's to come as much as it reflects on what came before. After all, doing a big elegiac wrap-up of an era that you just know is going to have a "See you next month!" promo stuck at the end is a fairly self-defeating exercise.
The set-up is that coming out of recent X-Men event series Schism, the X-Men are splitting along ideological lines. One side, the side coming back in Uncanny #1 next month, is the team led by Cyclops who believe that the survival of the species requires that every mutant be potentially regarded as a combatant, even the kids. So the kids who are staying, including most notably the new team led by Hope, are aware that they're putting themselves in the firing line along with the adults who are happy to put them there. The central role of youth-as-warrior in the entire history of the team is highlighted extremely well (and extremely subtly) by a reuse of the art from the very first page of issue #1 with new dialogue reflecting the changed situation since. That first issue went on to have Professor X send his teenage students into combat against Magneto. Cyclops is maybe not so far away from Professor X's example as is usually suggested.
This issue goes on to counterpoint the final departures from current headquarters Utopia with the scheming of one of the more interesting 'later generation' X-villains, Mr Sinister, whose long term manipulation of the team, and the Summers family in particular, is revisited, showing by his accurate predictions of their various behaviours exactly how big a threat he can (and inevitably will) be to the entire X-family.
In the course of twelve or so issues, Gillen has rapidly established himself as one of the better X-Men writers of recent years, and this issue, serving as the epilogue not only to almost fifty years of the series, but also to Schism, does the closure thing without making it maudlin, but also opens up storylines for the new start.
I'm not a huge fan of artist Greg Land's current porno-tracing style, though he's toned things down of late, and this final outing actually has some nice moments in it - the best I'll say for it is that it doesn't detract from Gillen's story.
The X-Men have had their ups and downs creatively over the decades, but they've been, and remain, one of the strongest concepts in superheroics, and an important part of my cultural landscape for most of my life. Though I've drifted from comics a couple of times, it's always the X-Men that have initially drawn me back. If they were ending 'properly' I'd obviously be sadder than I am - as it is I'll give Gillen and Land (but mostly Gillen) credit for a well-crafted, dignified close with a hint of the promise of the new beginning.
The Other ‘-craft’ Computer Game
We recently (ie in the last few months) discovered Minecraft down our way, and oh my word it's fun.
It's a game with no goals but those you set yourself - no quests, missions, minigames or anything like that - just a world you're plonked into in which you need to survive (there are monsters that come out at night, or in any area of darkness), strive and (ideally) thrive. To do this you recover materials from the world around you and use them to construct... well, pretty much anything you like, really.
The game's presented in a wonderfully retro style - all cubic blocks and chunky landscapes - and from the moment you arrive it's yours to do with as you like.
The game's still officially in beta, with official launch next month, and can be played in single- or multiplayer modes. Singleplayer has its charm; you have to live completely on your wits and ingenuity; but I've rapidly learned to love multiplayer. The main reason is that The Mrs is running a server on which some of our old Warcraft friends are playing with us, and because of the time difference, we're only on at the same time occasionally. Which means that when we get on, we get to go and see what the others have been doing in our absence - an enormous fortress in a cliff, a pyramid of sand out in the desert, it could be anything.
Something I've discovered to my surprise is that I'm quite enjoying engineering projects; not a thing that would usually be the case in games or in life. I've been developing a rail network between our various holdings, making use of the switches, levers and power sources built into the game to develop quite complicated switching between lines, and I'm currently embarked on a side project that should be a lot of fun before I go back to develop the rest of the network and build actual stations, etc.
I'm a rank amateur at creating stuff in Minecraft though - check out some of this stuff to see the kind of vision some people are applying to the game (not all of the embedded videos in this page are still there, by the way).
Thirteen Years On
(This started out in my mind as quite focused, but became less so as I wrote it. Apologies for any lack of coherence.)
Thirteen years ago today, Matthew Shepard was lured to a remote rural spot, tied to a fence, tortured and left for dead. When he was found unconscious the next day the person who found him initially thought he was a scarecrow. He died in hospital without regaining consciousness five days later. His murderers each received two life sentences, one having made a deal against the other to avoid the death penalty. Their girlfriends testified at their trial that they had set out to target a gay man, which Matthew was.
Matthew Shepard's murder is seen by many as a defining moment in the long history of anti-LGBT violence. It shocked his own community of Laramie, Wyoming, and galvanised the wider American gay world to address the problem of hate crimes as they affected LGBT people. As a consequence of the Shepard murder President Clinton attempted to add crimes targeting the community (as well as those against people with disabilities and women) to existing hate crimes legislation but was defeated in Congress. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention Act as the legislation was finally called, eventually became law in 2009 and encompassed sexual orientation, gender identity (actual or perceived) and disability to the hate crimes designation.
I'm not planning on debating the thorny topic of hate crimes legislation, but I do feel like discussing the wider subject of plain old hate. Last month 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer committed suicide after a relentless campaign of bullying by his schoolmates, the latest in a depressingly long list of queer teens who've seen no way out of their despair but to end their lives. The It Gets Better Project is doing an amazing job in getting the message out that there can be a better solution, but clearly the hill to climb is huge. And the fact is that following his death those schoolmates who bullied Jamey ended up chanting that he was better off dead at a homecoming dance. To my mind that goes somewhere past a bullying mentality and into the realms of ingrained hatred. Among schoolchildren in 2011... which puts all the progress it sometimes feels we've made and are making into context.
It's hard to put into words how directly I sometimes feel this indirect, unfocused hatred. I see politicians like those who want to be the next Republican President of the US lining up to burnish their anti-gay credentials by signing vicious pledges to prevent our relationships being legally recognised, (and standing silently while the audience at one of their 'debates' booed a gay American soldier), I hear the leaders of groups like the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, treated as respectable commentators in the media, spewing hatred against me and people like me without ever meeting me or knowing anything about me. The leader of the FRC, for example, maintains that there's no correlation between anti-gay bullying and gay teen depression and suicide - in his twisted mind it's because LGBT kids know that there's 'something wrong with them' that causes them to kill themselves. (And note that those groups also on principle tend to hate non-Christians, Native Americans, non-white Americans and generally anyone not exactly like them - equal opportunity bigots, basically.)
On this side of the Atlantic this week, in a move I'll happily give him credit for, David Cameron announced that he supports gay marriage, not in spite of being a Conservative, but because he's a Conservative. From the leader of a party which inflicted Section 28 on this country barely more than twenty years ago, this is huge, and taken in isolation could be seen as a very positive sign. But of course there was the inevitable religious backlash (against an updating of a civil status - I see no point on which they have room to comment), and it's in the context of an increase in anti-LGBT (especially T) crime in the UK. So I can be relatively sure that David Cameron wouldn't want to kick my head in just for existing, but I can't say the same of everyone I encounter in the street.
I tend to count myself as lucky - I've only ever been on the receiving end of actual or threatened violence three times because of my sexuality. I've been on the receiving end of personal verbal attacks more times than I can count, and of indirect ones (every time I read the outpourings of the more extreme homophobes) even more frequently. But hate crime laws and an inch-by-inch more theoretically progressive society just don't ever quite rid me of the expectation that at some point I'll be on the receiving end of some form of anti-gay hatred again.