X Marks The Spot... Reboot Edition

All the cool kids are rebooting their comic book lines these days, so Dark Horse have decided to join in. It started a few months ago with Ghost, and now it continues with something that has me unreasonably excited: the return of X!

Way back in the dim dark past when I actually posted content to this blog, I had a bit of a thing for this guy. The regular series was written by Steven Grant and had a host of excellent artists throughout it's 25 issue life. It's been collected into two volumes, which I recommend highly. Now it's receiving the reboot treatment via Dark Horse Presents, with the aim for an eventual stand-alone series. So I thought I'd take a look at it.

This new story is written by Duane Swierczynski, with art by Eric Nguyen. While I can't claim to be overly familiar with Nguyen's work, Swierczynski's proven himself to be pretty decent - I enjoyed his run on Iron Fist and the new Bloodshot over at Valiant has been enjoyable. At the very least, he's shown he can write violent characters with a decent use of tough-guy talk (one of the things I LOVED about Steven Grant's work on the character). Obviously things are going to be updated with a reboot, but I was anxious to see how the team handled what I consider to be the core aspects of the character. They only have 8 pages to play with, but I felt they acquitted themselves very well.

The story kicks off with some resident bad guys having a meeting about the costumed vigilante. We're immediately re-acquainted with the basic operating method of X: marking people for death.

There's the intimidation aspect of sending characters photos of themselves; the creative team also keep alive the old device of people encountering objects that form an 'X', in this instance while X himself is carrying out a hit.

The only difference I'd point out is that in the original series such a sign would indicate impending death for the 3 people in the panel, whereas this occurs after the intended target is dead. So it would appear it's not going to be handled quite the same, but I'm happy to see the idea still present.

Next up, it's established that X is very driven and pretty damn tough. After catching a bullet in the arm, we see him in an alley rendering first aid:

That had to hurt. No indication from this if his regenerative powers are present in this incarnation - this could merely be to stop the bleeding while the wound regenerates, or it could be a necessary patch to stop him bleeding to death. We shall see.

Right at the end, we get the first taste of dialogue from our "hero".

I assume this is interrogation rather than a slow death - X was never one to prolong things, although he was not above trying to pump someone for information. To be honest I could've done without all the blood (on this and page 3), but that's a tiresome trend in comics that's unlikely to go away any time soon. Plus it drives home the uncompromising attitude of the character, that he's willing to hack limbs off to make a point. Maybe that's pushing the character a bit more into the realm of 'psycho' than he was previously (and he was pretty psycho to begin with...), but it'll be interesting to see where they go with it. X's own dialogue didn't set my world on fire, but it's his first words we're hearing and this is only 8 pages.

Overall, this was a good beginning. In 8 pages a fair amount happened to establish the character of X while still leaving a ton of questions. We saw a little bit of the criminal element and the world of Arcadia. Enough to give us a feeling, if not a well defined guide. The pacing was excellent, and the art was great both from a storytelling point, and for setting the mood of the book. As much as I hate reboots, this is a situation I can live with. I'm happy to have one of my favourites back, and this was a positive enough beginning that I hold hope for the future of the character.

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

Continuing on from last week's encounter, where X marked someone for death but they escaped. Thankfully for those of us that like violence, they came back. What will happen?

Let's get it on!

Not long to go now...


Dear god, I love that man.

I feel I should be saying something witty with these pictures, but really, they have it covered on their own.

Incase you were wondering, that was the sound of his neck breaking.

Aaand he's down...

Aaaand now he's dead...

X Omnibus volume 1 by Dark Horse is out this month. It's awesome, buy it.

Free stuff

No actual content tonight, since I went and saw Iron Man again. Yep, just as good the second time.

Anyway, in the course of making yesterday's post, I came across a bunch of free eComics that Dark Horse has here.

And while it's not overly great or anything, it would be remiss of me to not link directly to the X eComic.

Here Dark Horse, Have Some Of My Money

Public service announcement re: Dark Horse comics

I was having a look around Borders today, since I had a 30% off voucher. Their selection of trades, while big, isn't particularly exciting, so I was having a hard time finding something. Then I found this:


Dark Horse have begun collecting their superhero universe! This thing came out in January, somehow this is the first I knew about it. Almost 500 pages, collecting the debuts of the entire line (which was released in 4 groups of weekly comics), and one of the main (possibly the only? I forget) crossovers.

Granted the entire line lasted a shade over 2 years, so yeah they had their share of crap, but there were gems, such as my beloved X, and Ghost. Barbed Wire was shitty, but managed to be made into an equally shitty movie starring the always shitty Pamela Anderson and her shitty fake boobs. I'm about halfway through the first storyline, much of it I haven't read before, and it's been fun.

488 pages, $24.99US. Full colour too, though it's in standard new-release paperback novel size, not your standard comic trade size. I just looked it up, and it's paved the way for this (end of this month):

Awww hell yeah. Plus vol 2 in about 3 months, which is brilliant, because this series has been next to impossible to complete. You can probably tell from my irregular X Marks The Spot series, but if you like comics with attitude and plenty of tough-guy talk, you need to check these out.

I'm stoked to've found this. Even better, it was stickered at $55, but it scanned up at the US price (someone screwed up, and the cashier didn't notice), so with 30% off I got it for around $17 which is freakin sweet. I leave you with the opening page, which begins the story behind the cause of everyone suddenly developing super powers...

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

So far, the examples of X dispensing with his justice have been relatively tame. Now you're going to see him carve his message into someone's face.

Specifically, that guy right there.



Lesson time, because the crooks don't read the monthly comic:

Hmmm, y'know, he's not as intimidated by that as he should be...

Uh oh, someone just broke the law again.

He's marked with an 'X', but the bad guy makes it out of there. What will happen when they next meet?

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

...or at least a severe beating.

What's wrong with this picture?

Hey look, their bodies make an 'X'. I sure hope they don't accidentally summon that X guy.

Oooops!

You just saw your man taken out, you're in your underwear, really- why would you go for a gun?

Take note of that mirror, it's important.

Can you guess what happens next?

Ok, so that wasn't too hard to see coming. Interrogation over...

...but X leaves a lovely parting gift for the couple.

Talk about a mood killer.

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

Poor old X. He was just out for a quiet nighttime ride with some dead guy strapped to the front of his bike. Then the dead guy's friends had to go and ruin it.

Thankfully there were options aplenty.

"Here's something I prepared earlier..."

Hey look, it's the hero's calling card, marking you with an "X" before you die. That sure was handy.

Here it comes...

X manages to endeer himself to thousands by taking out the power grid. Thanks, X!

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH (!)

Welcome to the next installment of The Punisher X dishing out his brand of justice. Remember, one mark is a warning, two means certain death. Rarrraaghhh.

"Well see, there I was minding my own business, when some psycho decided to have a go at me..."

"My gun wasn't working, so why not try a brick wall?"

Oh yeah, not so tough now!

Take that!

Note: when someone's trying to kill you, this is a bad development:

Two strikes, you're out.


"...it was the strangest thing, I told him to leave me alone, and he just walked away..."

This is also a bad thing to have happen:


Thak?

Empty gun through the neck. Oh yeah baby. Let's hear it for the 90's anti-hero.

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

New feature time, because I'm getting bored with spending 95% of my time talking about Firestorm and The Silver Surfer. Particularly since the former has only had a handful of appearances in the last year, and the latter has had to get by on the back of a couple of shitty minis in recent times (yes, 'Requiem' and 'In Thy Name', I'm looking at you). So I'm going to throw the occassional glance in the direction of one of my favourite titles of the past, 'X' by Dark Horse.

Specifically, I'm going to be looking at the ways he killed people (and he killed lots of people!). His particular 'thing' was to mark people with a '/' for their first offence. A second offence would get you a '\', obviously combining to form a 'X' (conveniently tying in to his name. Imagine the problems if he had been called "W"). Being marked twice meant you could expect to be killed in the very near future. Which brings us to:

X marks the spot... of DEATH (cue dramatic music)

Some bad guys are having a meeting on an in-construction sky scraper. Private, yes, but oh so many places to fall from. Things are urgent though, because they've recieved some troubling mail.

Their meeting is eventful, but I won't bother you with details. All you need to know is that they tried to hire someone to kill our hero. That's probably not going to go down too well with him.

Say, what's that on the floor?

Oh dear.

And with one simple word, Peter condemns his cohorts to death. Any 5 year old can tell you, monsters never get you until you look at them.

Fatality #1:

Did I mention there were on a tall building already?

Oh, good.

Fatality #2. "WOM!" indeed.