X-Lapsed, Episode 082 – Empyre: X-Men #1 (2020)
X-Lapsed, Episode Eighty-Two
Empyre: X-Men #1 (September, 2020)
“[Alien] Plants vs. [Mutant] Zombies”
Writers – Jonathan Hickman & Tini Howard
Art – Matteo Buffagni
Colors – Nolan Woodard
Letters – VC’s Clayton Cowles
Design – Tom Muller
Edits – Bissa, White, Cebulski
Cover Price: $4.99
On-Sale: July 22, 2020
Welcome, friends – to Empyre!
Now, your fumblin’, stumblin’, humble host hasn’t the foggiest idea what Empyre is all about – but, even without peeking can hazard a handful of guesses…
Since this is a Marvel mass-crossover-event, one might assume we’re dealing with:
- Interchangeable Alien Invasion
- Heroes Fighting Heroes
- A story featuring our heroes bouncing everything off uninteresting and snarky S.H.I.E.L.D. characters
- Finding out – Everything we thought we knew… was wrong!
I mean, it’s gotta be at least two of those, right? I suppose it’s time for us to find out! I hope you come along for the ride… it might just be a bumpy one!
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@acecomics / @cosmictmill / weirdcomicshistory@gmail.com
This is terrible. The comic not the podcast. You're still great, Chris. The principle problem is the Scarlet Witch. She has been utterly ruined as a character probably starting from Byrne's West Coast Avengers run and progressively getting worse every time they tried to fix her. They took the most interconnected and familial of the Avengers and separated her from everyone else therefore removing her unique selling point. Then they hobbled her further by removing her mutant identity for exceptionally stupid reasons. Bringing her back into the X-Men immediately damages the story. Unless they're going to do a story where it's revealed she really is Magneto's
Unless they're going to do a story where it's revealed she really is Magneto's daughter but she dies protecting mutants without knowing and is resurrected back into the mutant family I can't see a story that could rescue her.
Creating an angry zombie army is probably the stupidest thing that Wanda has been given to do.
As for the alien invasion, it's clear that the X-books couldn't ignore Empyre. Alien plants invading Earth inevitably would cross into current X-Men territory but it can't help feeling stale when we have spent so much of the HOXPOXDOX era on space stories. This is compounded by using a weird team of characters. I presume Hickman wanted to use people who weren't focal in his current plans but it ends up feeling like an afterthought or a random pick of names from a hat.
I must admit I didn't read this as closely as I do some other titles but did I miss how the zombies got from Genosha to Wakanda? Based on the map on the info page they would have had to travel hundreds of miles through a heavily populated region of Africa. Are we to believe that no-one noticed an army of zombies invading a continent.
I basically walked away from this issue feeling angry. Not at being conned into buying it because I read it on Unlimited but at the slapdash nature of the thing. All the people involved can do better.
The art was good. I should probably mention that.
I almost feel resentful that I have to read another 3 issues of this crap but I love your podcast and getting to be a part of it through commenting is such great fun so I'll survive.