X-Men: Supernovas
Writer: Mike Carey
Artists: Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Clayton Henry, and Mark Brooks
Marvel Comics

This is part 2 of my delving back into the X-Men universe, and I have to say I didn’t like it quite as much as Ed Brubaker’s epic, but it’s still fairly decent. It tells a different kind of X-Men story, more spandex and super-villains than space adventure, and does itself credit by following a different trail than Uncanny X-Men. Mike Carey is telling a more conventional X-Men story, and does a decent, but not great job.

This book has the first three story arcs of Carey’s run (issues 188-199), along with this year’s X-men annual. The first arc deals with the team coming together and dealing with the Children of the Vault. They’re kind of a mix of Grant Morrison’s Weapon X concept and Chris Claremont’s Neo concept, basically humans who have been in a time compression chamber and have advanced weaponry and technology, and possibly some powers. I don’t know, as it’s not terribly well explained. They’re fairly generic stock villains, and they don’t leave much of an impression. The story brings the team of Rogue, Iceman, Cannonball, Cable, an Omega Sentinel, Mystique, Lady Mastermind, and Sabertooth together in an organic way and it creates a nice dynamic with the heroes not really trusting the villains. It also sets up a few subplots that are revisited in later stories.

Next is the annual issue, which is mostly an exercise in cleaning the deck a little and doing some set up for the next X-Men crossover. Rogue and team go to the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier to try and fix Northstar and Aurora’s damaged minds. Meanwhile, old enemy Exodus shows up with a couple of henchmen to steal the helicarrier so they can take all the new mutant babies who have been born since the Decimation. The big reveal is that there are no new mutants. This feels like it’ll be important in the future, but is not that big a deal for this story. The stuff with Northstar and Aurora is decent, but to be honest, I have no connection to the characters, so the point is a bit lost on me.

The next arc deals with the X-Men facing Pandemic, another fairly standard villain with not much personality. His big plot is that he wants Rogue’s powers so he can steal people’s minds, again for reasons not terribly well explained. This one is 3 issues as opposed to the first story’s 6 issues, and it feels like a decent length, I don’t know if the plot could support more issues.

The final arc deals with the team trying to cure Rogue after her run in with Pandemic on Cable’s island of Providence, until an alien shows up to kill another alien who’s been a running subplot in the previous issues. As with the other arcs, the villain is not that interesting and the plot doesn’t have much menace to it, so it’s just “Who cares?” It does end with a decent plot turn, and knowing what happens in the next few issues, I’m kind of interested.

Carey handles the writing, but falls short in each of the arcs in a big way. None of the arcs have a very interesting villain. Compelling antagonists are just as important to stories as compelling protagonists. Without an appropriate threat for our heroes to fight, they come off as weak or less interesting. The stories do have lots of action, and some decent characterization. Carey also does a good job of catching the reader up on whom certain characters are (particularly the Omega Sentinel and Lady Mastermind). I just wish the villains were more fleshed out.

Art is handled mostly by Chris Bachalo, with Clayton Henry doing a fill-in issue for the first arc, Mark Brooks handling the annual, and Humberto Ramos drawing the second arc. Bachalo is Bachalo, and he has a very idiosyncratic style, heavy on design, but is not always clear on storytelling. It works at some points for me, and doesn’t at other points. I much preferred Ramos’ style, as it keeps a lot of the dynamism, but is much easier to follow. But I’m an old school fan of the American manga style, so it could just be me. Henry and Brooks do decent jobs here, although Henry’s art style is radically different from Bachalo’s, so it makes for a dramatic shift mid arc.

Lack of villain aside, I enjoyed this. It’s a different kind of story than what Brubaker is doing on Uncanny X-Men, but it’s well done. It’s a very traditional superhero story, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you should enjoy this. It’s a bit by-the-numbers, doesn’t do anything ground breaking, but is good in its simplicity. You can do a lot worse than this.