Exiles from the beginning!

[Flâneur]

So, with the ZOMG BRILL resurgence of Exiles under the spectacularly awesome Jeff Parker, I thought I should start this so we can all revel in the glory that are the Judd Winnick and Chuck Austen (and some of the Bedard) issues and LOL at the Claremont ones. It will be updated with reviews from one issue to the next whenever I feel like, there will ALSO be guest reviewers at points.

So without further adieu, I present to you the:

http://exiles.confusticated.com/exiles.gif

[Flâneur]

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/1457/snapshot20090702210308.tif

EXILES #1:
Down the Rabbit Hole
Writer: Judd Winnick
Pencils: Mike McKone
Inks: Mark McKenna
Colours: 'JC'
Letters: Paul Tutrone

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6086/snapshot20090702205902.tif

WHAT HAPPENS:
Blink, our point of view character, is all OMG I'M A FALLIN OUTTA SKY as she lands in this totes random desert.
We then get an info dump, courtesy of narration boxes, about Blink's past and the Ages of Apocalypse.
After some WTF WHERE AM I out of Blink we bump into Nocturne and then others who each introduces themselves with a bit out of confusion. They then exchange vital info like whether they're tops or bottoms etc. before popping off to the Timebroker's cosmic kitchen.
The Timebroker is basically a tubby British guy, kind of like Twisted Bliss, who is a figment of the Exiles' collective subconscious because they are freaking out something epic. He shows everyone's histories, powers and origins on his cosmic television and explains their dilemma: they're unhinged in time and will get pregnant and die, basically, in their own timeline. Since they're unhinged in time they've been chosen to go on missions and save the rest of the universe by traveling through alternate realities and fix them.
Once Blink has been given her Tallus bracelet we're teleported to the first mission (finally) and then given the lowdown on this reality which is pretty much a spin off of Zero Tolerance:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/169/snapshot20090702220528.tif
The mission they're given is to "find your greatest leader" and everyone in the team is like LOL PROF X and Blink is like UM? WHAT? WAI? as she is able to tell with her uncanny instincts that Professor X is an omniversal douche. She's overruled though and Magnus builds a Cerebro that Nocturne and Mimic use to find the Professor in a jail cell.
So we're at said jail cell and the Exiles are kicking arse and smashing and bashing their way through soldiers until they get to the Professor where they free him from his restraints and then teleport out of there with him. Of course then it's all LOL FAIL as even the Professor tells them how fail they were for freeing him (even the Professor knows he's shit!) and blasts them unconscious TO BE CONTINUED.

THOUGHTS:

I came in thinking this would be epic brilliance but not really. There was ALOT of info dumping going on in this issue, like a lot and when I bothered to give it a re-reading it gave me a serious tl;dr feeling to the point where I wondered ... is this as bad as a Claremont issue? So I checked a Claremont issue and no, no it isn't. It's generally done much more cleanly and the sentence structure of the info dump simply isn't as painfully verbose but still enough that it's a little bit tiresome.

On the other hand, the character work is great and even ignoring the info dumps we learn a lot about them as they go like when Mimic is all 'Look alive people' and Nocturne tells him to CHILLAX. We get to understand that he's a bit of a boy scout who automatically tries to steer things while we see Nocturne is less uptight. In a lot of comics these days by no one in particular *cough* we'd hear that at great length. And of course their voices are all fairly distinct.

The concept is obviously really cool and I really liked the characters created, they're really nifty and take advantage of the alternative reality schtick, there were also a lot of cute little nods like 'Canadian Express' and 'Zisa' but ultimately I thought the reality they ended up in was kind of boring. We've seen it soooooooo much in the X-men universe with DoFP variants so it wasn't super pleasing.

I'm also not much of a fan of the art by Mike McKone, it's sort of like Alan Davis stylistically and looks great when we're given just one face to focus on as a panel but it looks a little awkward at times, like so:

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6706/snapshot20090702224242.tif

That might PARTLY be the colourists fault since the colours are a bit standard and crayonish but gee that bit looks so off to me.

VERDICT:

I liked it but it was a little it boring and not as good as I remembered it, it's fairly average. It's not great, it's just better than bad and has a lot of potential.

B

[worstblogever]

It was a pleasant enough start. People I knew got sucked into this series because of Blink love at the time, craving Clarice (fresh off her own series) and getting her, here, finally.

And along the way, they learned to love like, Nocturne, Morph (kinda sorta another AoA fix), Mimic and the rest of the crew. Blink got people to peek, and the story, as it was, as well as possibilities from alternate Earths (another concept that fans fell in love with during Havok stumbling around the Mutant X universe), seemed to do the trick.

Winick and McKone struck while the iron was hot, to be sure. And while issue #1 is an info dump, from here on, they just kept things zooming along, at a crazy pace. It wasn't boring, you always wanted to know about what weird Earth they just fell on, and what they had to do (a la Quantum Leap) to move to the next.

A lot of borrowed concepts, but all hit in a perfect storm of a launch.

[Flâneur]

It was a pleasant enough start. People I knew got sucked into this series because of Blink love at the time, craving Clarice (fresh off her own series) and getting her, here, finally.
Were many people really reading the Blink mini though? I've never even read it myself and the 90s boom of AoA stuff was over so there wouldn't have been much of a glam to ride off of.

[worstblogever]

Were many people really reading the Blink mini though? I've never even read it myself and the 90s boom of AoA stuff was over so there wouldn't have been much of a glam to ride off of.

Every X-fan I knew, at the time, picked it up, or borrowed a copy from another person 'round here. When they saw it on shelves, their response was, "FINALLY!"

Blink is, and was just cool. And after AoA, she went into limbo for about eight years. I mean, I lost count of the number of letters columns where readers asked writers if they'd bring her back somehow in the 616.

[blinkinrogue]

i read the mini and i thought it wasnt good, a waste of clarice. her pairing with "the guy" (i'd rather not mention his name lols) seemed random and out of nowhere.

there should be a best original exiles thread like the best marauders thread. :biggrin:

i liked the second issue though, felt sorry for magnus.

[limerick]

Flaneur,good luck with the thread---don't get keyboard cramp!:biggrin:

[Josef F.]

LOL, I did this once.