X-Lapsed, Episode 089 – Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex #1 (2020)
X-Lapsed, Episode Eighty-Nine
Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex #1 (October, 2020)
“The World”
Writer – Jonathan Hickman
Art – Rod Reis
Letters – VC’s Ariana Maher
Design – Tom Muller
Edits – Bissa, White, Cebulski
Cover Price: $4.99
On-Sale: August 5, 2020
Back to business as usual… and back to our Giant-Size side-series!
Get ready for some Fantomex… as he spends many pages re-entering a chaotic Danny the Street… er, I mean “The World”. It might feel like we’re reading “Baby’s First Grant Morrison Comic”, but it’s got some of the finest art we’re likely to see in a saddle-stapled offering!
All that, plus some great and thoughtful discussion in the return of the Mailbag!
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@acecomics / @cosmictmill / weirdcomicshistory@gmail.com
This is an issue I skipped because of my dislike of Fantomex. Somehow I missed the fact that it was drawn by Rod Reis. I'll have to try and get ahold of it as it's the kind of book I have to have physically. Digital doesn't do justice to art books.
Fantomex was one of my least favourite elements of the Morrison run. In fact I would say that, outside of Cassandra Nova and Kid Omega, the weakest parts of their run was the antagonists. When I remember Morrison's run favourably I'm thinking of the interaction between the X-Men and the reappraisal of mutant culture not the villains.
Like you I would rate Assault on Weapon Plus as one of the weakest stories and I always considered The World to be a bit of a nonsense idea. I see why you relate it to Danny the Street.
Either me or Jonathan Hickman has misunderstood the World. I thought theWorld was meant to speed up time. If Fantomex was visiting every 10 years then surely his twin would be considerably older than him. Also I thought it was key that Fantomex himself grew up in the World and that was how he could have been a baby when he was taken by the Weapon Plus people 3 experiments after Wolverine (Morrison made Weapon X into Weapon 10) but be an adult at an accelerated rate. If I read Morrison correctly then Fantomex couldn't be present during World War II. Of course they did establish that Fantomex lied a lot about his history so maybe a later writer retconned that.
You're right, though, it's worth buying the book just for Rod Reis. He's an artistic genius.
In response to your feedback section I would take issue with your characterisation of Crisis on Infinite Earths as a more complicated book with fewer editors than a modern day X-book. It's largely a symptom of how the work is credited. Crisis is credited as edited by Len Wein only but he did work with an assistant editor. At various times he was assisted by Nicola Cuti, Bob Greenberger and Barbara Randall but none of them ever received a credit on the comics so I don't know who assistant edited Crisis. Similarly DC in the 80s didn't credit an Editor in Chief but Dick Giordano was definitely involved in Crisis, based on interviews he was more involved than CB Cebulski is with the X-books he gets credited on. We also know that both Paul Levitz and Jenette Kahn were involved in the issue to issue editing of Crisis. There were at least 2 other DC editors involved with Crisis as both Marv Wolfman and George Perez were co-editing Titans when Crisis was created. Effectively Crisis was the most edited book in comic's history which might explain why it was so good. There was no way an error could pass as there were so many eyes on it.