Xtreme X Men: Savage Land

Rating:
Summary: definitely not claremont's best
Review: it's not surprising that so many people are looking to sell their copy of this tpb, which collects the entire x-treme x-men savage land limited series. claremont's tired plot concerns the x-treme x-men's group adventure in the savage land in which they help an ancient dinosaur-like race called the saurids enter the savage land and then fight against an old savage land enemy brainchild to preserve the peace there. yawn. the saurids look way too much like the shi'ar race and the writing jumps around so much that it takes an effort to follow what's supposed to be going on. no character development, storm gets transformed into a primal state and then back (zzz), and threads that get brought up never get pursued (e.g. rogue's mental turmoil). kevin sharpe's artwork is competent, even though it pretty much just looks like slightly less slick versions of larocca's. this was one of the few tpbs i've read that i really had to make an effort to finish. this storyline is def. weaker than the first x-treme books, but i'm not much of a fan of either of those either for the same reasons: claremont just seems to be rehashing the same old plot devices with none of the emotional depth he used to reach. the story is a standalone, so you can avoid this one unless, like me, you just want to see sage in action, although she doesn't get to do much here.

Rating:
Summary: Nice trip to the Savage Land
Review: Teh problem with Uncanny is that its Xmen leftovers. Angel?---the most dangerous XMan ever next to Iceman and Nightcrawler, with WOlverine thrown in to make sure someone will buy this book. Stacey X, the mutant prostitute with the heart of gold?...I mean really. Teh interestign part of adding the Jugegrnaut to the team is a nice touch, something original darting it's head in. But this book lacks direction. New X-Men seems to be about the future of teh Xmen and Xtreme seems to follow the theme of self-manifestation and determination and Uncanny seems to be about all the Xmen you would never call on to save theworld. Now if that were followed up on and this was the B team that no one had much faith in that would be cool. Adding some New Mutants,, XForce members, Generation X (they chose Husk over Jubilee and Monet---ugh! and here she's proven to be rather dunderclass). There's no spark here. Its Xmen drudgery. Against Black Tom and his amazing plant powers. Then Lobo wolf men with the most assinine, self-pontificating write overs about evolution. Thsi should be the dirty team, teh schizos, the mess ups, the forgottens doing dirty work, the stealth team, instead it's the yellow bus, reject Xmen. The addiiton of Northstar is a nice twist in the right direction but the whoel team needs to be those kinds of twists. Throw in some villains, some humans (you know I've always wondered about that part----for all their co-existence, peaceful harmony talk there are no human members of the team---this would be a good place to experiement with that concept. We keep getting the human perspective from Xmen, we shoudl get it from humans. They need a token memeber.)
Though this review is for New XMen, I have to say that Uncanny and Extreme average overall into my rating of 4 stars. I know there's been a lot of hullabaloo about Morrison's work on New X-Men---new directions, excitement, blah blah. However I'm not so sure much has changed so radically. By measuring change I mean if Morrison didn't write anymore issues would there be a vast change in the X-Men. Ok, Emma Frost as a member is fun and a good twist, however I think that the creation of new characters and the wholesale tossing out of others (like the New Mutants, who're comign back in yet another series to run 50-100 issues and be cancelled along the lines of New Mutants, Generation X and X-Force) rather than integrating them eventually into the team. I think this is the main deficit of teh XMen. Characters created that are likeable, taht are durable, eventually can't be changed in any significant way.
Prof. X having a twin sister who is wholesale evil was nice, though from the first panel Cassandra appeared in, I knew who and what she was. Maybe I've been reading comics too long to be surprised too deeply..........
There was a HUGE, I mean HUGE storyline buildup to Cassandra stealing the Prof.'s body and returning with the Shiar to wax the Xmen out. And teh fight was.........ehhhhh....not that scary. I mean everyone pretty much stayed status quo. Morrison is twisting but not changing. At least in Xtreme, Psylocke is dead, dead, dead. Jean is having Phoenix trips again, Beats is upset because he's hideous, Wolverine is all violence talk and menace and Emma is a nice bit of relief as someone who's been there, done that. Cyclops, easily teh most boring person at a party is purposefully written as stiff, which is interesting and his affair with Emma, another interesting point but will he and Jean divorce over this? Nope. Status quo.
My measure of a great writer is that when you look back on the 20-50 issues they've done is it an entirely new playing field? Is anything of consequence changing?
Ok, the school is out and officially a mutant academy, which has possibilities but in many ways over the years it has been outted, just not as crowded. A lot of teh X-Men's main stable of enemies are either gone, dead or well........X-Men. So it makes you wonder what a real threat is going to be. This book dialogue wise and visually is sometimes good, even great and the overall plottin gof a maturing X-Men being more present in the world is interesting but I don't feel a sense of danger, a sense of forboding. I mean my big question is when a threat arrives, honestly, does anyone reading this book feel like someone might not survive? That Cyclops and Phoenix will break up? That Beast really might be gay? There are playful twists, stunts, but not true change going on.
Cassandra, a serious threat was defeated too easily, and by easily, I mean there was very little collateral damage that we got to see. Supposedly she rendered tne Shiar empire to rubble, that should've been part of what the readers SEE not just were told. Good writing shows you not just tells you. Essentially compressing Cassandra into a mental file inside of a metamorph was unique but somehow too easy. Then again, I have to wonder why Emma, Phoenix and Prof. X together couldn't fight her? Morrison is a good writer, I agree and I'm sure a lot of the things he's done have been uphill battles, unfortunately the XMen are stuck in their own quaqmire of history and static characterizations. It would have been really interesting to see this new Cyclops who had been part of Apocalypse. That theme was explored for two minutes but not truly cracked open.
Also is it just me or has anyone ever considered that these young people are the Prof's puppets? Wouldn't someone so telepathically formidable leak his desires to those around him? That would be an excellent area to be explored.

Rating:
Summary: The savage land just got more savage.
Review: The x-treme x-men( storm rouge bishop beast and others) go to the savage land to investigate some strange happenings.

Rating:
Summary: not the best
Review: This isn't the best of the X-Men I've been reading lately. Claremont has produced some of the greatest X-Men stories of all time, but here he falls short. Their time in the Savage Land gives an okay story, maybe one that would be really good if it were someone other than Claremont. The other X-Treme X-Men that I've read are pretty good though.