Customer Reviews

Universe X, Vol. 1 (Earth X 2)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Actually it's probably misleading to call this a sequel; its not so much an all-new adventure as it is "Act II". The same trials and tribulations that took place in Earth X are still going on, its just now there are different players and goals. With Earth X, you probably thought every dark corner of Marvel Lore had been fully plumbed. You were wrong, as Ross and co, go even farther, bringing back lotsa characters the average Marvel zombie might have long forgotten (Gargoyle! The Micronauts!)
Like Earth X, Universe X (and this review applies to both volumes) is indispensible and you'll go back to it over and over again.
There are however two problems with the book: the big one being the artwork. It's not bad but a project like this deserves more majesty--something along the lines of what Ross did in Marvels. If painted pages would have been too costly, you would have liked to see some computer enhanced imagery as is so common today. You might have though Marvel would take a page from DC's books --when they've got a big deal story they get Ross the painter or George Perez or someone along those lines. But the art here is strictly run-of-the-mill; it's to the story's credit that it can rise above. I had the same complaint with Earth X, but at least there the drab, grim art complemented the story. Here, the art is too 'comic-booky'. The only part where this is good is in the Spider-Man 'flash-forward' scenes. (you'll see what I mean)

The other problem is the lack of reference material. If you don't own the complete run of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, or havent been reading Marvel comics for at least 20 years you could be hopelessly lost trying to make heads or tales out of this story. I'm grateful that they didn't stick
90 mutants in this epic, and also for the many in-jokes and sight gags, but some of the more obscure people, places and things deserve a footnote of sort so that younger readers wouldn't be completely left out.
Those objections aside, this is a worthy buy.
s

I felt moved to write this review after seeing a negative review about this book and hearing my local comic book propietor complain about this series as a "money-making scheme". Okay, I can't say much there because that is one thing that I do agree on, the comics and this trade paperback are woefully overpriced. Especially when you consider that this is only half of the Universe X series and you can expect to spend $50 for the entire collection. That having been said, I absolutely LOVE this series. I have read it so far in trade form and find that I cannot put the books down. I think it is fascinating to see how the characters I was so enthralled with growing up would fare in a possible abyssmal future. I believe the authors have done an amazing job of weaving the origin stories and practically all of the major events in these characters' evolution into a complex story in which each of these events serves a cosmic, karmic purpose. It is obvious that they did their homework. I admit that this volume is somewhat confusing but it makes more sense as it goes along which I believe makes it challenging rather than frustrating. Also, I found the three "one-shots" in this volume to be spectacular. The Spiderman one, "Spidey" was the best written comic I have read in a long time and reminded me why Spiderman is so appealing and why I still feel as affected by that character as I did when I was 5 and 15 years old (and now, for that matter). Obviously, I am with this series for the long haul. I look forward to the next volume. My advice: don't believe the (negative) hype!

"Earth X" was the story of an alternative Earth in which creators Alex Ross (story, character designs, epilogue and covers) and Jim Krueger (story and scripts) came up with interesting twists on the Marvel universe. There is a sense in which "Earth X" was a flip to DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," where the goal was to reign in the expanding universe of comic book characters and worlds into something more manageable after decades of stories. In contrast, the whole idea of "Earth X" was to damn the torpedoes and make everything fit (e.g., the gods of Asgard). I would hate to pick up "Universe X, Volume 1" without having read "Earth X," because a lot of what is happening here (e.g., who is dead and kicking) will make no sense to you, so you have to read the first part. On the other hand, I can see why some fans will be disappointed when they get to this middle part of the trilogy, which takes a much more episodic approach, with most issues focusing on a particular superhero. You get an idea of this when you see that Volume 1 collects the first half of the "Universe X" story, with "Universe X #0-7 with new Appendices, "Universe X: 4," "Universe X" Spidey," and "Universe X: Cap."

To make the long story of "Earth X" short, Terrigen Mists had turned pretty much everybody on the planet into super beings. The Celestials come to destroy the Earth by releasing a Celestial embryo but the planet is saved by the new Galactus (nee Franklin Richards), who consumes the egg. Reed Richards, who has been pretending to be Doctor Doom, creates a vibranium network of "Human Torches" to burn off the Terrigen Mists and thereby restore Earth's human population. Whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen, and as the "Universe X" part of the trilogy begins Earth is on the brink of a civil war. Losing the Celestial embryo has reduced the planet's mass, causing shifts in orbit and polarity that have resulted in climatic changes more akin to "The Day After Tomorrow" than "An Inconvenient Truth." Not surprisingly, the mass of humanity does not want to give up its powers and those Marvel superheroes left alive and now fighting those they once protected.

The main narrative thread throughout these stories are Captain America and the reborn Mar-Vell are on a scavenger hunt to collect the greatest sources of power in the world (e.g., the Books of the Darkhold and Vishanti, the Mandarin's rings of power). But there are separate issues dealing with Reed trying to bring Sue back from the storm, Spider-man and Spidersman, and what I would call the final fate of Captain America except for the fact that in this storyline the dead live on and fight on in the land of the dead where they all think they are alive. I am not sure if this view of the realm of the dead is a telling allegory (comic book superheroes never really die), or whether this variation of Valhalla is just a major flaw in the story. There may be relatively few deaths in the world of comic books, but those deaths usually matter, and this idea undoes that. There are deaths in these stories, but we are talking about deaths in an alternate Marvel universe so it is not real (in addition to being not "real").

John Paul Leon has been replaced as the penciler, so "Universe X" has a different look. Doug Braithwaite and Thomas Yeats and the main pencilers this time around, with Jackson Guice doing the layouts on "Spidey" and Brent Anderson doing some pages as well. Bill Reinhold is inking again, but Al Williamson gets equal billing in this trade paperback and there are a whole bunch of other inkers credited, including John Romita Sr. who does the "flashback" pages of the "Spidey" story. The plethora of artists only reinforces the idea that this is not as coherent a story as the first part of the trilogy. I do not think the results are great or particularly memorable (although certainly some alternative reality comic book stories can be) and I become less and less interested in the appendixes to each chapter as we go merrily along, but there are some interesting elements to be plucked from the complex narrative, such as the idea that the biggest bad guy of them all would end up being Crusher Creel. I already have "Universe X Volume 2 TPB" and have pre-ordered both "Paradise X Volume 1" and "Paradise X Volume 2," so I am going to see this trilogy through to the end.

Universe X is the sequel to Earth X, and the middle section of a huge trilogy. It continues the basic plot threads from the previous series- In the Marvel Universe of the future, many of the heroes we know are dead, many more are changed beyond recognition, the population of the Earth has been mutated by the Terrigen Mists of The Inhumans, and The Celestial Plot has been foiled....

This chapter starts with Reed Richards (Of the Fantastic Four) trying to keep the hordes of Mutated Humanity from dousing his "Human Torches", Giant pyres that will reverse the effects of the Terrigen Mists....Seems that most of the world doesn't WANT to be normal again. From there the story becomes positively byzantine, and I expect readers who aren't well-versed in the particulars of such obscure characters as The Living Mummy, The Micronauts, Captain Universe, etc., will feel totally lost. I, on the other hand, have been a comic-book geek for my entire life, so this was like a trip down memory lane, revisiting characters I haven't seen in ages. (It's nice to know that Alex Ross and Jim Krueger, the creative forces of the "X" books, are apparently bigger geeks than me! Who else would wonder why the omniscient Captain Marvel didn't forsee the cancer that killed him?)

As dense as the book sometimes is, it's worth buying. Especially good is the Captain America chapter, as Cap struggles to protect the child-incarnation of Mar-Vell. A very moving story that captures, maybe better than any other story, the essence of the Cap character. I was truly touched.

The art varies throughout the book, and sometimes it's hard to tell who's who. The art serves it's purpose, and it's easier to follow than the art in Earth X, but I still wasn't too impressed. The art in the Fantastic Four, Spidey, and Cap chapters are vast improvements over the rest of the book.

Longtime Marvel readers should be impressed.

I enjoyed the earlier volume, "Earth X," which was written by the same author... It was dense, but rewarding. This book, however, is just dense, almost unreadably so. Kreuger seems to be trying to cram every last little bit of the Marvel Universe in that he can, and the story is soooooooper gab-gab-gabby, overblown and kind of not that interesting. It's a haphazard tack-on to a very interesting earlier effort. Plus, the artwork (by a variety of contributors) is mostly really terrible, and looks quite slapdash... I'm a fairly devoted Marvel fan and I painfully slogged through this book, but you might want to think twice before you do.

PS - I'm also not fond of the future-Captain America being portrayed in the likeness of the bald Bruce Willis. Gimme a break. (Axton)

I bought both volumes of Universe X without knowing Earth X was the first part of the story and proceeded to read them the second I got back from the store. I absolutely loved them. I imagine reading Earth X first would have illuminated certain areas of the story but everything was explained very well and I thought the story overall was great. I have always liked alternate reality comics, such as "What If".....Peter Parker hadn't gotten bitten by the spider?......Germany used the super soldier formula first?....etc.etc. So when I saw a huge graphic novel written and drawn by Ross and Krueger I had to get it.

While Universe X mentions in passing what happened to some of the more mainstream hero's and villians in Earth X so you don't get lost, I have to go out tomorrow and buy it to get a more detailed account. I recommend this highly! This series is wonderfully drawn and extremely well told. I found it to be entertaining and very enlightening as Krueger's story was at times very philisophical.

Also, since this story is very complex, a high level of knowledge of the Marvel Universe and it's characters is recommended.

Gorgeously rendered, creative deconstruction of the mythologies and philosphies underpinning the Marvel Universe. Only recommended if you like some more cerebral fare, as opposed to Wolverine vs Hulk.

This series looks into the nature of reality as defined by the various cosmic beings that live there, inhabit it, and manipulate and use each other and the greater and lesser races and creatures around.

As someone who grew up on Marvel comics and has a particular taste for dystopic alternate universe stories, I should be the ideal audience for this whole X series. But I'll tell ya - it isn't quite working for me.

The first volume, Earth X, mostly suffered from muddy drawing - could anyone really tell the bedraggled bearded figures of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Steven Strange apart? - and an overly expository script. I went back and forth, but finally decided that I liked it OK.

But this volume really wore on me and made me feel foolish for buying it. If Earth X suffered from too much exposition, this volume positively grinds to a halt and stays there most of the time. I can't remember any dialogue that isn't itself exposition. Yaaawn. And where Earth X was a little too complex in its winding and unwinding of forty years of Marvel continuity, what we've got here is positively byzantine.

So what is this book? It's sumptuous covers by Alex Ross that are the best thing about it. It's clearer interior art by various artists, some borderline good, some pretty bad. It's older versions of your favorite characters acting out of character, plus new characters that you don't much care about. It's a plot-free prologue to whatever Paradise X is going to be. It's tiresome and frustrating. Like Earth X, it's an ode to the "What If?" comics that I loved, and because it is I'll probably even buy the next volume, god help me. But if you don't have my peculiar complex, don't bother.

I had stopped buying comics when I discovered Earth X #0. It looked like the nifty Marvels, which I had wanted but not badly enough to purchase. But I wasn't sure I wanted to buy it until I had read some others, and by then it was too late to find back issues. Eventually I found and bought the paperback.

The same happened with Universe X (though I'm still trying to find the second volume--I don't know why the first one wasn't listed as such here). Both X-series take a long hard look at the basic assumptions that underlie the tales of favorite comic heroes and villians. The origin of their abilities, yes, but more importantly, why they should take on the roles they do. Though I have to admit I've read too many conspiracy stories to look kindly on them, the notion that the superpowered denizens of Marvel's Earth have been in the dark all along somehow works well.

Unfortunately, the quality of the art in Universe X is uneven and lacks the consistent darkness that made Earth X feel as gritty as it did (and actually made me notice artwork quality for practically the first time). With the exception of the Spidey sideline, where the four-color art served an obvious purpose, I'd have preferred that the same artists have done this series in the same manner as Earth X.

What I love the most on Earth X was that I don't need to be a Marvel Comics fan to undertand it. You go from character to character knowing them and understanding their part on the story so everything turns out to be enjoyable fantastic.

This is not the case with Universe X part 1. I found this first half very difficult to read because of the inclusion of several non-popular characters and realms and past stories that make it dificul to understand. There is also some cosmic talk and Multiverses (mind you DC) and Microverses and different realities that takes the love and meaning away from the original saga.

I just end up this one to continue with Universe X part 2. I hope at the end this whole purchase pay off.