DARK AVENGERS UNCANNY X-MEN UTOPIA #1

Review by: flapjaxx

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Why on earth is this first chapter of a crossover entitled “Utopia”? If this is “utopia”, then what use is the word “dystopia”? Is Fraction calling this “Utopia” as part of ironic statement? If so, he never really plays on that. The last chapter of this story will be titled “Exodus”–will that make any more sense than this “Utopia” does? It’s hard to say. I listened to an interview with Fraction on the Uncanny X-Cast a week ago. When pressed about what this first chapter title actually meant, his reply was something along the lines of “Er, well…the last chapter is titled ‘Exodus’. So it’s, y’know…’Utopia and Exodus’.” Does he think “Utopia” is a book of the Bible or something? So, right off the bat, whether you liked this issue or not, please try to realize that these authors we praise for their storytelling abilities (and on that level they are deservedly praiseworthy) are actually often pretty dumb and superficial when it comes to thinking about larger concepts or ideas. They just are, sorry. “‘Utopia’…that sounds meaningful. And draw an anarchy sign witin the ‘o’!!!”

On one level, of course, “It doesn’t matter”. On one level, this is a very good first issue of a typical comic book crossover. Actually, I really had a good time with this. I loved how the different factions (X-Men, anti-mutant activists, Dark Avengers, San Fran police, politicians) spiral around each other and inevitably are led toward headlong collisions. I loved the Silvestri art; it simultaneously exuded 1) top-notch current computer-aided comic art, 2) the best of Image-like art from the ’90s, 3) still a hint of how this guy drew during his stint on Uncanny X-Men during the ’80s.

But the whole premise of the story is based on nonsensical reasoning. How can “anti-mutant crime”, or even “anti-mutant sentiment”, be at an “all-time high” in America, if there’s barely any mutants left? That doesn’t make sense. For mutants, the crux of the situation for a while has been that
there’s only 198 of them left. And that number has since
dropped somewhat due to various characters dying or leaving earth or whatever (I’m not that much
of an expert to say exactly how many fewer mutants there are, but
everyone knows that, yeah, we’re somewhere below the 198 figure). In
the aforementioned Fraction interview, he said that the X-office at
Marvel actually does have a master list of all the known mutants left, and it
numbers around 130-140. So that means that after you count up all the known super-hero mutants in X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, etc, along with all the evil mutants like Toad and Exodus and company, there’s about 50 mutants left unaccounted for in the entire world. That’s a grand total of 50 pitable mutants who are neither in a “support group” like the X-Men nor in the category of loner super-criminals. (If a covert U.S. strikeforce takes down Omega Red while he’s threatening a miliary base or something, does that count as “speciest anti-mutant sentiment”?) And how many of those 50 would be outside of the United States? … You see where I’m going with this? There can only be a maximum of about 25 unaccounted for mutants in the U.S. So how the heck can “anti-mutant sentiment” be at an all-time high? What, were there FOUR anti-mutant incidents this month, or something? And that’s supposed to be a higher figure than before M-Day, when there were tens of millions of mutants?! It doesn’t make sense.

Of course, you can say that I’m thinking about things too much or that my math is wrong, but even if you accept that there are still 198 mutants left, that figure is STILL way too low for there to possibly be an “all-time high” of anti-mutant hate crimes. The whole scenario is bogus. And if you actually think for a second about how few mutants would actually be susceptible to make up that faction of the discriminated-against, you’ll find that the figure must be ridiculously low, as I tried to show above.

Almost in recognition of this illogical scenario, at one point (I think in a recent issue of Uncanny) we’re told that, oh, these figures include crimes against people who used to be mutants before M-Day. That premise makes no sense, either, if you think about human nature. If someone lost the quality that made some people hate them, they sure as hell wouldn’t get hated on more. Maybe some bigots would still bear considerable resentment toward the handful of former mutants they personally knew of beforehand, but the idea that there’d be an uptick of bigotry is too much to believe. You may say, “Ah, just go with it”. I would–I do!–but I keep in mind that this is just one more aspect of how this story is built on false premises. Sure, it’s a fantastical super-hero story…but even they are supposed to have an internal logic. The premise of Fraction’s X-Men run contradicts the broader realities of what’s happened in the broader fictional world, the Decimation of mutantkind.

Lastly, let’s look at the so-called Proposition X. There aren’t any new mutant babies being born anymore…so the idea is for there to be a nasty law that says mutants can’t have babies. Again, that’s quite illogical, sorry! On the ridiculous scale, it’s one step below an idea for an anti-gay law that says two gay people of the same sex are not allowed to produce children (“Uh…two guys can’t make a baby together anyway. Uh…two girls together can’t make a baby, either”). I know, during “Messiah Complex”, like over a year ago, there was ONE fluke mutant baby born, but the idea of Prop X is still ridiculous. If you’re going to introduce an idea like this, do it AFTER mutants are being born again. My point is, as far as the fictional world goes, this is like the least effective moment to introduce this kind of a law. But the readership overlooks this because Prop X is supposed to remind us of the real-life Prop 8, and we get jazzed over that. Really, though, if you think about this supposed parallel at all, you’ll find the two legislations aren’t really similar at all.

The fictional anti-mutant crowd wouldn’t think or behave in the way that Fraction portrays them. This isn’t how any organized human beings (haters or not) would plan to reach their goals. If there are so few mutants left, surely the anti-mutant crowd would go hunt them down and actually kill them systematically, exterminate the race once and for all, because forced extermination would actually be within reach. But we don’t hear much about mutants being killed, just about them being “discriminated against”. What Fraction gives us are little more than anti-mutant activists holding signs, marching and wanting laws and legislation. It’s like, imagine if the Nazis had found the worldwide Jewish population reduced to 198, and at that point they stopped the death camps, dropped their guns, and decided, “Hey, instead of doing this incredibly mean stuff, let’s start trying to go through a long, relatively polite bureaucratic process. Let’s just let the Jews that are alive now die off, longterm, and let’s just recommend that they not have kids. Meine friends, we suddenly find ourselves inches away from our complete, longed-for genocide of our enemy…so let’s not try too hard to eradicate them, huh?” Inane. The human villains Fraction has given us are inane, though in a way they’re the perfect match for his superficial sex-crazed heroes (but that’s material another reivew).

Why am I the only one to ask these things? Does anyone else see the illogic of this whole set-up? Or is everybody just too caught up and interested in how “socially conscious” the X-Men are, again, for a change? Maybe it’s “socially engaged“, but it’s not “socially conscious”–because it’s not really “conscious” of what it’s doing or saying. I don’t get the impression that Fraction himself has even thought this stuff through. “I heard about Proposition 8 on the news, so I’ll make a…Proposition X! What’ll it be about? Oh, some random awful thing. I won’t think too much about whether it makes any sense given the scenario.”

Part of me wonders if Fraction would blink at all were he to hear certain real-life ideas about how HUMANS shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce (in order to fight global warming in a roundabout way). I wonder, in the near future when and if those ideas are brought more to the public fore, if Fraction will even blink, or if he’ll just go along with the flow and believe whatever the mainstream news agencies would want him to believe. “Oh, I can only have one kid, so as to reduce the human population? Fine with me. Oh, some people aren’t allowed to have kids at all, if their home scenario is deemed unfit? Okay, well, we’re all safer that way, and I’m told it makes the planet healthier and less dangerous.” Will he notice the parallel between that idea and his “Proposition X”, or does he not think that much about the huge ideas that he writes about, beyond how they work as plot devices in monthly comics? (I’m not advocating for or against ideas in favor of depopulation, by the way. I’m not sure what I think about them, but I’m at least aware of their existence and how certain forces are pushing for them.)

When reading the big ideas of Fraction’s X-Men run, I can’t help but feel that the oft-lauded parallels with real-world events are skin-deep, superficial.

God, it’s sure compelling, though. If I could describe Fraction’s X-Men in one word, it’d be “compelling.” It’s so much fun to read. As a comic story, it’s great. But I enjoy reading Fraction’s X-Men for an underhanded reason as well: I read it to see how a person who’s quite unenlightened about human nature would write fantastical stories about how he thinks social changes happen and how masses of people would react to certain changes in their environment. On that level, Fraction’s Uncanny X-Men is a hilarious look at how naively the unenlightented view their world, with much righteous gumption–usually thinking they have a near-complete understanding of the whole situation, when they really don’t.

You’ll say I’m thinking to much. Well, I like thinking, sorry. It actually adds to my enjoyment of the comic. If I was going to buy a comic that I knew was quite logically “flawed”, but that comic would give me fodder for a lot of thought, I’d definitely still buy it. Maybe I’m coming off as a bit too mean or conceived, but I can’t help it if I notice the illogic of something. Hey, I wouldn’t be able to write a better X-Men story than Fraction–not by a longshot–but I’m a little more aware of the real-world workings of the themes he’s using, that’s all. I’ve read a little too much social theory and things of that nature, and I’m not going to block that knowledge off just to enjoy an X-Men comic…especially when thinking about that stuff while reading the comic actually makes me enjoy the experience more.

Story: 3 - Good
Art: 4 - Very Good

Comments

  1. I think the point of the title "Utopia" is that when the X-Men moved to SF they were given the impression that this would be a new mutant utopia, being welcomed so warmly by the mayor and the city as a whole.

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