Pining for the X-Men you imagine you should have
Some comic reviewers are just fans with unreasonable expectations.
Reviews are starting to come in for the first issue in the Tomb of Apocalypse miniseries. David Harth at ComicBook.com has a tough review masked by a complimentary headline: Tomb of Apocalypse #1 is the Jubilee miniseries we all wanted.
The X-Men are having something of a cultural moment right now, thanks to Marvel Studios. Avengers: Doomsday will be the last appearance of the FoX-Men, Jean Grey made her first MCU appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the first X-Men movie’s release date has been announced, with casting underway. X-Men ’97 has been holding the line of new MCU X-adventures, with the second season just ending. This season focused on the rise of Apocalypse, one of the X-Men’s greatest villains, a character who really hasn’t been doing much in the comics Marvel Universe since he made Doug Ramsey his heir Revelation, leading to the disastrous “Age of Revelation”.
I couldn’t disagree more with calling "Age of Revelation" disastrous. It had its faults, sure, but it was a fun ride. Disastrous is a bit hyperbolic. Right from the jump here, I can tell Harth and I don't view comics through the same lens.
He continues the same blunt force language throughout.
I’ve been yelling about giving Jubilee more attention for a while now and this book is giving me the Jubilee action I want. Allen was, strangely enough, both the best choice to write this book and also not the best. She brings the character stuff with Jubilee but cloaks it in what is a standard tomb-raiding story. Carbone’s art is good, but the fact that it’s so reminiscent of Pepe Larraz hurts it because it’s not on that level.
There’s a lot of nostalgia in Harth’s review. The parts of the story that live up to that nostalgia—like always wanting a Jubilee story—are praised. The parts that miss the mark of his expectations and memory—like saying Carbone is no Pepe Larraz—don't fair as well. The problem with memory and nostalgia is that they are as reliable as ghost sightings. Someone swears they saw something for real, but we end up having to take their word for it.
It's the same in this review. I'm left with Harth's expectations and what he thinks he wants in an X-Men comic, but I've got no real sense of this issue itself, as it is in the present moment. I'm left with one older fan pining for the 90's and early 00's version of the X-Men he imagines he should have. Those are some hard expectations to live up to, and it makes for a terrible review.