Dark Phoenix
Directed By: Simon Kinberg
The last tale in the Fox X-Men saga Dark Phoenix could have been a hell of a lot better. The material and the talent deserved better. But this is where we are (and not for the first time) and despite that Dark Phoenix was for me perfectly… average.
I’d actually rate Apocalypse worse and probably Wolverine: Origins.
The Refrigerator Monologues
By: Catherynne M. Valente
Grade: B
A short book in which Valente gives six of comics most famous “fridged” women the chance to tell their tales from Dead Town. Fridging women is the practice of killing, maiming, raping, disabling and numerous other things your female characters for the progress of the male superhero.
Age of Apocalypse #2
Author: Scott Lobdell, John Francis Moore…
Genre: Graphic/ Going to be a Movie
Grade: C
I decided to read Age of Apocalypse for the Great Imaginations (details here) challenge. It fulfills the movie square for me and I’m big into the X-Men movies and wanted to get an idea of where the next one was going since I had heard so much about the character of Apocalypse specifically.
In this storyline Charles Xavier is dead and Magneto has kept his promise to him and taken over his beloved X-Men leading them in a post-apocalyptic world in which Apocalypse and his cronies are killing human and mutant alike. Not just killing them but torturing them and experimenting on them to boot!
One big thing: a lot of the reviews will tell you start with two because the first book is all background and filler and if you are familiar with the characters you don’t need it. I’m not really sure that I agree with that because there are a lot of bloody X-Men, many of them only get name dropped in the movies. So yeah, I was a little confused. My own fault.
But also this is an alternative universe so I had to get a handle on who the bad guys are now and who Magento’s team is and Magneto and his wife. (His wife!)
Also I feel like I shouldn’t admit this but I pretty much despise the pairing of Logan and Jean in any world and yep, they even annoyed me in this one. I like him with anybody else besides Jean. I like him with Scott better!
Biggest problem was that everything was so chaotic I didn’t really get to understand Apocalypse and he felt kind of… jokey. Without getting into too many spoilers there were other things going on and other mutants that I actually thought were far more frightening and could be better villains. Even the art was just too much. Maybe the story gets streamlined as it goes on but it looks like there’s going to be big changes in the movie anyway and I’m likely not going to keep reading this one.
Recommend: Not really. I am taking into account that I was just dipping my toes in but neither the story or the art really did anything for me at all. Still looking forward to the movie though!
