New X-Men: Childhood's End Vol. 3 and, Also, Casablanca

[alixtii]

So I got the vol. 3 trade of New X-Men: Childhood's End about a week ago, as I mentioned at the time. Now, you might remember I was a little disappointed with the second volume, as the first was pretty much all about the school's response to M-Day/Decimation and really fleshed out the world of the school, providing some really great insight into the relationships the students had with each other and with the faculty, and the formation of the core team, while the second volume focused much more closely on said core team and was kind of overrun with plot. And I wasn't really all that interested in plot. I'd have much preferred, oh, a six-issue long slumber party or something.

There's more plot in the third volume, of course, but it's nicely balanced with character moments. And we get to inhabit not only the school, but a lot of the corners of the Marvel Universe with which I was previously unfamiliar. Plus Iron Man and Ms. Marvel show up, and one gets a sense of how the arc fits in with the overall Marvel timeline, in particular Civil War.

Emma continues to have a lot of great moments, as she usually does in this series (even more so than Astonishing, I think). We see the different ways that the guilt that Scott mentions at the end of Torn plays out has its effect on her, and the knowledge that Cassandra Nova is inside her head throughout this storyline, whispering doubt into her mind, just makes the whole thing that much more chilling, I think. I particularly love the moment when Hellion says "I don't want to bury any more of my friends!" and that's all it takes--despite the danger, she opens up the part of his mind that controls his power in order to allow him to reach supersonic speeds (or more supersonic than his normal speed; I'm not really sure what Hellion's powers are). Emma's buried far too many students, too, as evidenced by the fact that she's currently being haunted by Negasonic Teenage Warhead and all.

The Cuckoos exist in this pretty much as an extension of Cerebra, but that is enough to earn them a few panels and teenagers being trusted with huge responsibility is one of my kinks (there's a reason why I'm reading this title).

And, erm, what really sells the volume for me is the memorial service at the end is the memorial service at the end led by Kitty (you can even see the Star of David hanging from her neclace). I'm sure for a lot of people the sentimentality might have been over the top, but you have to understand that I eat that thing completely up; the umbrella scene in "The Prom" always makes me tear up and the first time I watched Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights I was balling at the end. So I found the naming of the names very moving and poignant. It was nice to hear (or, well, read) Sophie and Esme being remembered, and, to be honest, the list is incredibly useful as a canon resource. If only I had it prior to writing "The Flower Garden (of a Vicious Ice-Cold Bitch)."

I also saw the ending to Casablanca for the first time today. I'd seen the beginning several times, but never managed to get to see the end of the film. I knew what happened, of course, so it's not like there was any surprise, but I just sat there and marveled at how iconic every single moment was. I've read Umberto Eco's essay on it as a cult film, of course, so that naturally influenced my watching, but every moment was just so--rich and thick aren't the right words, because I think it's less a feature of the text itself than what it has become. But the people who made the film were either very smart or very lucky.

(Honestly, I'd resisted Eco's reading of it as a cult film, because calling what's generally considered to be the second greatest movie of all time "cult" just seems strange. But it does seem to share that "either very smart or very lucky" element with a lot of other cult films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)

Comments

[fandrogyny.livejournal.com]

I forget if Eco mentions this, but "Casablanca" is a lot like Shakespeare re:insertion of dialogue/verbiage into common parlance. The Epsteins and Koch managed to write phrases like "round up the usual suspects" or "this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" that appear just as often in the English language as "smells to high heaven" or "cruel to be kind" do. Either way, I'm usually prone to trust Eco unless I can find something I really, really disagree with, because he's one of the few people who can talk semiotics while still making sense, and who can talk about pop culture without going through that pleading "no, really, we -should- discuss pop culture!" phase.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

It's just that I'm predisposed to think of Casablanca (and Citizen Kane and the other movies ranked as among the best) as high art--and so a lens which looks at the movie(s?) as low art is sort of disorienting at first--Casablanca is a classic, Rocky Horror is a cult film. Which really works for your Shakespeare comparison, since his plays are also an example of texts which are in many ways low art but have somehow become immortalized and idolatrized as high art. Which isn't to imply that the high art/low art distinction isn't anything other than a sham, of course.

[m-mcgregor.livejournal.com]

I've been a big fan of New X-men since Kyle and Yost took over. A lot of comic fans seem to dislike them, mostly for killing off a lot of characters and bringing in X-23, but those are many of the reasons I quite like them. I think I've also got a little Hellion/X-23 thing going on as well, especially after he nearly kills himself flying her back, as well as how she acts around him in the aftermath.

I think Emma's probably better in New X-men right now than she is even over in Joss's Astonishing X-Men, particularly in the next story arc (which I'll not speak any more of in case you're only reading by the trades)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

They do seem to kill off a lot of characters, don't they? Of course, I'm not all that invested in most of the students, and if the payoff is as great as in the "Memorial Service" scene in this last volume, I won't be complaining.

I think New X-Men is my favorite title in general. I really enjoy the trade from the Morrison run that I have, and I just got a single issue of Austen from likeadeuce and that's pretty awesome too. I just think New is in a better position to give me what I'm interested in than Astonishing or the other titles (not counting things like the Kitty Pryde mini, of course).