Warning: This is going to be disjointed as hell because a) I’m writing it over the span of several days in various states of kid-managemen and b) No one is paying me to do this, so what do I care? :)

SO.  I got my assassin to 50 a couple days ago, and finished both the plot lines last night.  Unfortunately, the story did not improve since my other post on the subject.  The game play stayed about the same.

I. Story

Ia. Class story: Inquisitor

The Sith Inquisitor story is, in my opinion, crap.  Poorly written (although the dialogue itself was OK, given the constraints of a lame story).

The Inquisitor storyline is shared by the Sorcerers and the Assassins – the two force “heavyweight” classes lore-wise (one can make themselves entirely invisible for hours at a time, while the other can toss storms of lightning around, compared to the Sith Warriors who seem to kind of be the bruisers to me, less concerned with the esoteric aspects and more about the ass-kicking).  I mention the force heavyweight bit because that’s kind of the angle I was coming from – hoping my story would involve me becoming powerful and learning some Cool Force Shit.

To be fair, you do learn one thing.  Just one.  You learn how to absorb “force ghosts” (think the dudes from the end of Return of the Jedi) and use their powers for your own.  That’s kind of cool, in an evil sith-y way.  That’s the route to personal power you take.  That’s IT.  Which is, not, in itself terrible.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if that were the only bit of laziness around (nevermind that it makes the player character seem like a loser lightweight – your would-be-nemesis can fucking fly around and nuke shit with force lightning … while you are forced to rely on outside help just to survive his lightning.  *yawn*).  Oh, and they called eating ghosts FORCE WALKING.  Because that makes sense?  I would think “force walking” would be like walking on water or flying or hell, even like astral projector or something.  NOPE.  It’s eating ghosts.  OK. /facepalm

Unfortunately, the weirdness continues.   The light-sight stuff doesn’t make any sense or fit into the overall story unless you mentally force it.  Basically the dialogue options go 1->2or3 then 2/3 both go on to step 4 together, so frequently there was a disconnect between what my character might (rpwise) actually want to do, and what he winds up doing because there is only one path in most quests (disclosure: SOME quests have an actual different light and darkside choice, but none of that seemed to really matter in the long run aside from getting a couple light or darkside points).

I was hoping the finale would redeem all this crap, but it didn’t, much.  The last (2) fights (You fight the same fight twice, the second time the boss has double the hp…good times) were well balanced, and felt tough & semi-epic, but I really didn’t buy the villain, at all.  He wanted to kill you because he had some problems with your mentor and…  you were breaking with Sith tradition or something (this part would have actually made more sense if they had addressed me being an alien – which *is* a rarity, and made him xeno-phobic or something – BUT that wouldn’t work for a generic storyline, playable by all the races, so they didn’t do it.  This goes back to my earlier point about the writing here being *lazy*).   Anyway so you beat him blah blah and then you’re on the Dark Council, woopdy doo.  I think I should be a “Darth” too, but I guess inquisitor titles are still broken, because I’m not.  Oh, and they call you “Darth Imperius” – they don’t even use your name?  WTF.  Just don’t voice act that part… just say “congratulations to our newest Darth!” or something.  LAZY.

There’s more, and more I should say, but it’s hard to think right now with 3 kids making various levels of noise ;).  Maybe more later.

OH.  And you know those awesome intro cinematics?  The ones that cemented my purchase of the game?  Yeah.  That’s it.   You just get a shitty game-engine cutscene for both the endings.  Total bullshit.  They should have at least had a cutscene for the Empire & Republic shared arcs.

Ib. Empire story

Which brings me to the shared Empire arc (doable by all 4 classes).  I guess there was a story here?  Really it was just “Do some Empire shit on each of these planets you happen to be on anyway.”  Foil the Republic, kill some Jedi, etc.  (Note: There are A LOT of Jedi.  Must have taken a lot of work to wipe them all out in time for SW 4).

So, there wasn’t really much of an “Empire story” per se.  Some of the individual planet ones were kind of interesting – I mean, about as interesting as you can make a “Kill X rats” or “Get y pieces of rat feces”.  Which is to say – pretty interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, the baseline is still the same (no real improvements here) but SWtoR & WoW have shown that they can make the trinity of generic questing (I forgot “Bring thing Z to person Q”) interesting enough that you forget the underpinnings.

So no real complaints about the Empire plot arcs.  They were what they were – generic quests made as interesting as the writers could.  HOWEVER.  The finale bit for the last planet was really annoying – they’ve got these supposed crows of people cheering you and it sounds like a fucking office party for a Local Small Business after 2 beers doing a round of golf claps.

A cinematic of the final battle or something would have really helped here…

Ic. Companion stories

I’ve done most of them about halfway through (5-7k/10k) and the Ashara one all the way through – because that was the romance option (so I figured it would be the most put together).  Well.  It was, I dunno…in a vacuum it would make sense, but it didn’t make much against the backdrop of what else was going on.  Especially her calling you “my lord” and bowing in the final scene (and I’m light side, remember), that made me feel icky.  That’s just me, I realize.  Lots of people are going to be going darkside here and then stuff will make sense (although I’ve been told that you can’t turn her to the darkside, so the story is basically the same… and yeah, no sense making).

The set up was all there for tempting her to the dark side, but I guess they just forgot about that?  Or maybe the parent company forced them to out the door the damn thing before everything was fully baked?  (A la Dragon Age 2 and its *wonderful* re-use of the same scenery ad nauseum.)

II. Gameplay

The gameplay was pretty solid, if basic.  Interrupts were nice – when fighting bosses with things to interrupt – the one boss I had real trouble with was an Empire storyline giant robot…died about 7 times before enlisting some help.  He had nothing to interrupt, just a huge hp sack with heavy damage.  Compare this to the inquisitor line bosses who generally have multiple things to interrupt, forcing you to prioritize and strategize… better design on the inquisitor stuff, imho.

I’ve done a fair bit of PVP, and it’s all been pretty fun so far.  But, I don’t generally PVP in other games so I don’t have much to compare it to.

Instances are generally entertaining.  I have yet to try any hard modes yet.

III. Overall fun and “worth it” factor

The story did keep me playing the game – but mostly because I kept hoping it would get better!

If you enjoy basic wow-style mmo stuff, and like the Star Wars setting, you’ll probably enjoy this game.

If you’re looking for an awesome story set in the SW universe… I certainly cannot recommend playing the Inquisitor path.  I’m not sure if I’m going to play mine ever again, really.  It left that bad of a taste in my mouth.

The Assassin class was enjoyable – I’m guessing it may be one of the trickier classes to play, based on comments I heard others make and how I saw the other classes appear to be performing.  In enjoyed being able to skip 80% of the trash mobs…not looking forward to them!

IV. That Being Said…

I’m canceling my sub just so it doesn’t auto-renew, but I may renew anyway, we’ll see.  I’m going to give Soldier a shot, as I want to try something totally different and I’ve heard the Soldier is one of better storylines.  So far (l13, Commando), it definitely looks to be a different experience.   We’ll see how that carries into the 40s.

Wolverine vs. Captain America : Haven’t we seen this before?  Shouldn’t the archetypal pairing be Cyclops vs. Captain America?  I guess maybe the outcome of that match would be too apparent?  (Cap, unless Cyclops caught him full on with his guard down or something).  So, I guess this is the “main event”.  Even, I guess. Except that Wolverine will keep getting better, but I suppose Cap could get him down for a bit.

Storm vs. Thor :  I love Storm to death, but there’s no way she should win this fight.  It’s almost silly.  They probably should have done Collosonaut vs. Thor – that’s really the closest thing to an even match I can think of for Thor, and he’d probably still win that one.

Spider-Woman vs. Gambit : The match no one cares about!  No?  Well, OK.  This one is even enough then.

Spider-Man vs. Iceman : The money dictates that Spider-Man win (that and he always wins) but, realistically…Iceman could just freeze the whole room.  Done, end of story.

Captain Marvel vs. Rogue : This one at least has some history to not.  Not that I’m convinced any of this crap will make any sense – although Marvel swears it will – but there’s at least a back story here.  Still, unless Carol is an idiot and lets Rogue get close, this isn’t even a fight.  Seriously.

Psylocke vs. Black Widow : With prep time, the Widow would win.  But I can’t see how that would happen in an actual fight.

Luke Cage vs Beast : Sorry Beast, this would last as long as it takes for him to hit you.  I’m guessing there will be a lot of talking in this one.

Magneto vs. Iron Man : Except for the fact that Magneto is generally a villain, this should never be a fight.  (Unless either party gets prep-time, of course).

Hulk vs. White Queen : OK.  This is uh, interesting.  Hulk’s gonna win that fist fight, so this is going to have to move onto the psychic level, where she’s got a chance.  But, if that’s the case… I dunno, this is the only not like vs like match out of the covers.  I’m confused.  Then again, the Avengers have the Hulk + Thor (for this series at least) – what the hell do you do against THAT?  Namor, maybe.  Since he’s an X-person now?  Namor vs. Thing (see below) is another match that would actually make a lot of sense but that they miss.

Cyclops vs. Hawkeye : Should be Cyclops by a mile, but you know, ambushes and all so who knows.
.

Daredevil vs. Archangel : Umm.  What?  Are we out of continuity here?  I don’t even…

Colossus vs. Thing : I think this one has happened before, and the win went to the Thing.  But, you know, with Cytorrak’s powers on top of his own, this should be Colossus by a mile.

That being said, the premise for this series (or rather, for the main AvX series – this book is simply described as fleshing out the battles from that book, so it’s at least not even trying to be anything other than what it looks like) looks somewhat terrible, even with all the “work” they’ve done to make there be an actual reason for the two big cash co-err teams to do battle.  STILL.  There is something to be said for comics targeted at 7-14 year olds. I mean, we haven’t had anything like Marvel vs. DC in a while (Avengers vs. Justice League was the most recent that I can recall and they, of course, teamed up in the end – still, this could end that way : Everyone vs. Phoenix!).  And the books do seemed to have stirred up quite a bit of internet debate (old school!  x vs y!  Who is the strongest!?), that’s probably a good thing for Marvel.

[Note: All images from CBR article here.]

So.  Yeah, this happened.  I was completely planning on skipping this game because… another Star Wars game, who cares, right?  (Don’t answer that!)

However, two of my real life friends were excited about playing and I like playing games with people I actually know IRL, so I went with it.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get everyone on the same server, but oh well.

So.  The game is basically Mass Effect (or KotOR, but I didn’t play that, so ME is my Bioware comparison point) plus WoW.  I mean, like exactly.  You have got all your standard quest types, having to farm massive cash for mounts that come way too late, etc. from WoW, stacked on top of the companion and plotline system from the Bioware games.

There are a couple of other little tweaks – like the fact that you can send “companions”/pets/party members off on crafting quests to harvest resources and create items for you while you are doing other things.  This is really cool in theory and in practice, although the durations of the missions just gets STUPID the higher level you are – currently mine are 15-35 minutes.  5-20 seems like it should be the sweet spot for me, but hey, game balance and time gated progress, right?  They have to keep people p(l)aying.

I have a level 40 assassin and 26 sniper, so I’ve definitely been playing.

Null, my (Lightside!) Sith Assassin

The space missions are also great. I mean, they are simple, but they add a ton of fun to the game for me and as you level up new objectives are added to the missions, so even the starter mission continues to be interesting..  I think that’s what really sold me on it – the fact that hey I have a starship but OH hey I can blow shit up with my starship? WIN.  Also, hitting 80 missiles is akin to getting a mount as far as improving your ease of experience goes.

The story IS generally pretty good, or at least mine was up until recently.  I liked the Inquisitor plotline up through level 30/end of chapter 1-ish.  After that, it seems to be just getting stupid/sloppy/lazy (“force walking” = ingesting ghosts?  WHAT THE FUCK?  That doesn’t make any kind of linguistic sense.  Turning ghosts into macguffins = meh.), but the beginning was good.)

They also have the whole light/dark good/evil plot dynamic that I guess KotOR probably had.  You can choose various dialogue options that may get you Light Side or Dark Side points and potentially affect the outcome of a mission or dialogue.  Generally, they seem to have no effect save getting you light/dark points and companion points (no one seems to refer to any of my past light/dark actions, so I guess no one notices that I’m a light level 3 sith lord /shrug), but inside the instances (dungeons) there are generally a choice or two that affects the flow of the dungeon – like venting a crew out of an airlock to expedite something or taking the long way and saving them.

It’s also worth pointing out that some of them are really bizarre.  At one point, another Sith kills my apprentices (whom I never bother to train).  The lightside response is to bribe him to leave??  You have to actually take a darkside point hit in order to fight the bastard.  Other times the “light” choice will be more “evil” on an “average human moral compass” kind of level… I wonder how much of it is intentional and how much is sloppy writing.

This game has a lot of room to grow – filling in companion gaps (agent & inquisitor go 10-15 levels between companion 2 & 3 – and companion 2 doesn’t even really count!), adding a wardrobe system so you aren’t quite as restricted in your looks, adding gear coloring/dying, fleshing out their legacy system (right now you just choose a last name that is account wide and dump xp into that “legacy”, but nothing happens), adding more visual options, instances, free range space missions, etc.   I’m curious to see what their update strategy looks like… I’ll be around for a little while at least.

So.

Avengersland : Looks pretty similar to last year, aside from some changes to the Avengers Academy group:

• Luke Cage : Still doing his thing, running the New Avengers & the Thunderbolts.
• Baby Cage/Jones : Still not hyper-aged to a zombie death machine!
• Shang Chi pops up occasionally in Secret Avengers.
• Blackpantherdevil : Still doesn’t make any sense to me.   It exists – but I think it’s gotten canceled and is wrapping up soon.
• Storm : Is an Avenger now too!  I forgot she filled in for the FF for an arc, so it looks like now she’s been a part of all 3 of Marvel’s major franchise teams.
• Patriot, Wiccan, Hulkling : Young Avengers have been appearing in the super-sporadic Children’s Crusade series.  I think they are pretty much locked down until that is over.
• Avengers Academy continues to look more and more like the actual kids of today.
• A new White Tiger joined the team, bringing the Latino/a count up to a whopping 2.
• Striker recently came out to one of his new teammates, who also happens to be bi (I think it’s Katie Powers – whichever Powers daughter was in the Runaways arc.)
• Hazmat & Mettle are still around.
• Wizkid is in the supporting cast now.
• War Machine has his own book again – 11 or so issues so far.  He’s also in Secret Avengers sometimes.
• The new Goliath is in Wonder Man’s “Revengers” anti-avenger team.
• Centurius (I had to look him up too) is on the Thunderbolts B team.

Hulkland

• Amadeus Cho has been sadly absent for a while now, although he did appear in one of the Fear Itself minis alongside Spidergirl, the new Thunderstrike, X-23 & the new Power Man.

Xland

• Storm is on two X-teams (Uncanny & adjective-less) and an Avenger, so she’s all over the place right now.
• Jubilee (Vampilee?) is still getting lots of panel time, and a current member of the adjectiveless book.  She also had a decent arc in the Wolverine & Jubilee 4-issue mini-series.
• Karma has been mostly sidelined taking care of that faceless dude for a while.  But – she’ll be back in the Astonishing X-Men next year under Marjorie Liu’s pen – so I’m *really* looking forward to that.
• Dani Moonstar is still kicking entirely too much ass for a non-mutant in a mutant book (;) ), and leading the New Mutants now (Sam is off in Wolverine’s X-Men book in semi-limbo).
• Sunspot is still around as well.  I think I even saw him flying once or twice, so that aspect of his powers may still be around.
• Northstar is (mostly) over/on loan to the Alpha Flight mini-series while it runs its course, but it looks like he’ll be in Liu’s X-team as well.
• Warpath was team-less most of the year, but recently moved over to Storm’s team in the adjectiveless book.
• Richtor is re-powered and still with X-Factor.  His relationship with Shatterstar continues to get page & plot time.
• Monet is also still with X-Factor.
• Darwin has been mostly awol, after one weird stand-alone story.
• Armor was in Astonishing for most of the year, I think.  At the moment she is team-less.
• Daken has had a solo book all year, but that is ending in the next couple months.  He’s still an asshole.
• Velocidad is still with the Generation Hope team
• but Idie is not.  She was the pivot point (?) for the major x-event this year (Schism), and then moved over to being a supporting character in the new Wolverine & the X-Men (which is much better than I expected) book.  She’s gotten a few lines in each issue so far.
• Prodigy is still around (and still powerless, yet I think the Cuckoos restored his memory of the abilities he had copied or something) on Utopia and turns up in a panel or two from time to time.
• Anole had an arc in a limited series this year with Rockslide, and turns up from time to time.  He moved over to Wolverine’s book/school.

Elsewhere

• Misty Knight headlined a new Heroes for Hire incarnation that has already gone under, but followed that up with a Villains for Hire mini in progress.  I’m still pissed/bummed about her child with Iron Fist being unwrote.
• Secret Warriors wound down, and only Quake (who I think is white??) is still around.  So there’s a couple of cool minority characters sitting around in limbo now.
• I want to say the Blue Marvel turned up in a one off issue somewhere fighting Hyperion or something…but that may have been last year.  Either way, I hope he winds up somewhere out of limbo in 2012.  Maybe he was in a panel or two of Fear Itself or something – you’d think something like that would be hard to avoid.
• There’s a new (Latina) Miss America in the Teen Brigade, featured in Joe Casey’s Vengeance series this year.
• Angel Salvadore (still powerless) also appeared in the Vengeance series.
• The new Power Man had a limited series with Iron Fist, as well as appearing in a Fear Itself tie-in mini with X-23, Thunderstrike, Amadeus Cho & Spidergirl.

That’s it for now.  I’ll add more as I remember/discover it.

Marvel has been introducing a decent number of new minority characters in its newer titles (Generation Hope, Avengers Academy, Vengeance, Secret Warriors).  Hopefully some of them stick around.  Also, next year needs more Cho.

Not sure how  I stumbled onto them (mention in RS?  Pandora?) but the covers album is worth every $.  The other 3 are fairly straight rock/punk/post/-ish/whatever, pretty solid.  But the covers album really gives Nina’s voice a chance to shine (imho).

Observe:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VfN6UmQlfI

Exhibit 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQf95dRgK4

Anyway, check ‘em out.  Prowl youtube and such.   Back to you regularly scheduled non-updates.

8lbs 4oz, healthy.  Long labor, lots of work for my wife (natural birth :) ).  I just tried to help out and be supportive.  Truly inspiring to be a part of.  Moving, bonding experience.  My wife is awesome.  And of course, there’s the wonderful prize at the end:

But don’t you worry my 3 (1?) loyal reader, there will be more video game/comic rambles.  Eventually.  No self-defenestrations, please.

This got me thinking about why this might be.  I mean, what is it about pet classes that I enjoy so much? I had no answer for that.  So I moved on.  Into the past!  I started thinking back to the first “MMOs” that I played (I use quotes here

• a) because I can
• b) because I like lists and
• c) because that exact term wasn’t yet in use
• d) because lists break up monotonous text)

… which were…. MUDs!  [Note: It's worth following that wiki link and skimming it if you have no idea what I'm talking about.]  And some of them even have pet classes.  Which I played.

Indeed on, the MUD that I really got into – Everdark (no web page, but point your telnets at everdark.org:3000 for

• a) an awesome experience
• b) a blast from the past and
• c) graphics only limited by your imagination)… circa 95-98 maybe, the class I focused on was the Undead.

Classes were (and are – it’s still up!) much simpler than modern MMO classes.  Each class, there called “guilds” has about 10 skills and they all share the same resource system (just ‘spell points’ – no endurance/mana/energy/rage/fury/etc.).  The Undead guild, of course, has a pet!  You can, after killing an enemy, animate the corpse to follow you around like a textual zombie badass  (Unless it was just a squirrel, then it will be textually squashed).  The strength of the pet varies by the strength of what you killed – I think.  It’s been a while.

               . '@(@@@@@@@)@. (@@) `  .   '
     .  @@'((@@@@@@@@@@@)@@@@@)@@@@@@@)@
     @@(@@@@@@@@@@))@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@)@@` .
  @.((@@@@@@@)(@@@@@@@@@@@@@@))@\@@@@@@@@@)@@@  .              1974-2011
 (@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@)@@@@@@@@@@@\\@@)@@@@@@@@)                 In Memory
(@@@@@@@@)@@@@@@@@@@@@@(@@@@@@@@//@@@@@@@@@) `
 .@(@@@@)##&&&&&(@@@@@@@@)::_=(@\\@@@@)@@ .   .'
   @@`(@@)###&&&&&!!;;;;;;::-_=@@\\@)@`@.
   `   @@(@###&&&&!!;;;;;::-=_=@.@\\@@     '                 MudOS v22.1
      `  @.#####&&&!!;;;::=-_= .@  \\                                    
            ####&&&!!;;::=_-        `                     Admin: Skywise
             ###&&!!;;:-_=                          Arches: Phoebe, Zack
              ##&&!;::_=                                   Nameless, Bax
             ##&&!;:=
            ##&&!:-           _____                   _            _
           #&!;:-            | ____|_   _____ _ __ __| | __ _ _ __| | __
          #&!;=              |  _| \ \ / / _ \ '__/ _` |/ _` | '__| |/ /
          #&!-               | |___ \ V /  __/ | | (_| | (_| | |  |   <
           #&=               |_____| \_/ \___|_|  \__,_|\__,_|_|  |_|\_\
   jgs      #&-
            \\#/'
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rest thy weary feet, and be our 'guest'.
What is your name:

[ascii'd above: The Everdark login screen, partially cut off because my blog is scrawny. ]

[TANGENT

One thing worth noting about MUDs, and definitely Everdark, is that a quest on a mud is completely unlike what you are used to from quests in MMOs these days. I mean... for one there were no online hint sources - many muds would destroy your character and ban you if they caught you doing something like that anyway, but the ones I played just weren't big enough to have fan-based web pages (many had their own pages).  For another thing, the quests were actually hard.  I don't mean hard like you needed a 60 person raid, I mean hard like you had to use your goddam brain.    Many, Everdark in particular, incorporated complex puzzles in addition to the standard monster slaying.  Some quests were simple, some took months to figure out, and some many people never figured out.  There was definitely something to the feeling that you accomplished something that only 10% of the population had.

TANGENT]

As near as I can tell, Everdark must have initiated my love of pet classes.  I tried a few of the other guilds – I definitely remember some time as a Fighter – but they had no pets so I eventually left & returned to Undead (it’s worth mentioning that switching guilds carried a penalty: a death, at minimum – it was harsh enough that you didn’t just go around hopping guilds all day.  BUT, you also didn’t have to make a new character to try a new guild).  Before this I’d played plenty of PC-based RPGs – the SSI gold box D&D games, the Phantasie series, Wizardry, etc.  But I don’t think any of them had any real pet classes (until Diablo 2, I can’t think of an RPG with a solid pet class) – I mean, sure you could call your party your “pets”, but there generally wasn’t a central “you” character.  So, the roots of all this must lie in Everdark.

Everdark pets, general summary:

• Druids & Illusionists get an easily summonable “dumb” pet whose strength varies with the summoners.  The pets have a generic “damage” attack.
• Rangers get a very customizable (name, sex, description) bloodhound pet that can be used to scout out other rooms and chase enemies.  Pets have a generic bite attack.
• Mages get a customizable (name and spell used) apprentice pet.  Two of the spell choices for the pets are not strictly direct damage spells.
• Undead get a variable pet – its strength and abilities are dependent on the power of the foe whose corpse you use.  It can also be commanded to use various kinds of equipment – there were/are a number of hidden “tricks” as to what it can wear and take advantage of.  Undead pets are the only ones who can wear equipment.  Undead pets can have up to three abilities (they are the only pets with multiple abilities, I think).
• Ranger/Mage/Undead pets can all be commanded to stay in one room and wait or to follow their controller, if I remember correctly.

I think some of the appeal is that I get to play with a mini “team” without having to rely on other humans.  Face it humanity: I’m not your biggest fan. I mean, I love people in specific – but people in general… rarely impress me.  So, there’s that.  Pet classes do tend to solo very well.

Is there more to it? I don’t know, maybe this journey down memory lane (this will be a sequence of posts, as time allows) will bring me to some kind of epiphany.  Along the way I’ll also try and look at the progression of pet class construction, gameplay & balance – not to mention the innovations each new game did (or didn’t) bring to the table.

NEXT TIME: Evercrac- err – Everquest!   More undead!

Breakdowns:

Since Fantomex was the final reveal, the only surprise here is that Wolverine is not on the cover – I’d assume he’s still on the team?  If not, it might be a bit more interesting.  AoA Nightcrawler was the only real curveball, and I think he was the first reveal.  Looks like Arcangel is either dead or  permanently a villain now.  Well, by “permanently” … you know what I mean.  I doubt an original X-Man will be left dead or evil for long (Have Iceman and Beast died yet?  I forget).

The writing here has been solid enough, and the whole Psylocke as a double agent bit is interesting… but, we’ll see, I’ll probably get the first issue.

Idie!

Although why she is flying in the wacky energy-effect dealio is anyone’s guess.   Massive red herring, I suppose?  Her powers are temperature (fire/ice/etc.)… not wierdo plasma aura.

Beast here kind of looks like Dark Beast (I REALLY hope it’s not Dark Beast.  Ugh)… but I think that’s just an artist thing.

I’m happy to see Iceman in one of the headline books… but Quire… double ugh.  I suspect he might be enough to keep me away.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved what Grant did with him, but I’m just not convinced that anything done since then has been worthwhile.  Also, he’s an asshole.  At least currently… I thought he had repented and reformed at one point?

Kitty & Lockheed back together is always a good thing.  Not digging the costumes so much… sleeveless Wolverine?  Retro Kitty?  Utility strap Beast?

 Oh God. I forgot about Toad.  He’s hiding back there.   Fuck Toad.  Seriously.  Especially new, movie-fied, Toad.  Not that the old toad was anything special, but the whole huge tongue always hanging out bit is annoying.  I’ll take Quire over Toad any day.   Bleh.

So bummed that this will be Carey’s last arc on Legacy.  It’s been such a solid run.  Hell, he managed to make Rogue interesting again!  And even a super-strengthless, groundbound rogue.  Although there were threads about her having access to old powers that haven’t been picked back up yet.  Bummer. I like that Frenzy is sticking around, she has a nice potential arc based on the whole memory of Age of X thing.  She seems to be the only one getting any mileage out of that.

Welcome back Rachel!  A cast of 4?  Going to be one of the 2 or 3 books I actually look forward to.

The only surprises here were Havok & Polaris coming “back”, as it were, but Havok was the first reveal so Polaris was kind of a given.  Looks like.. Darwin’s missing?  Anyone else?  Normally a cast this big might be overkill, but Peter David has been doing really well with the large cast stuff so far, so I’m not worried.

I’m very, very curious how Havok is going to play into the whole “investigations” thing.  I like him as a leader, but I like Jamie way more as the leader for this incarnation of X-Factor… dunno what will happen there, but I’d bet that’s one of the initial plot points.

Looks like soulless Guido is still kicking around… curious where that is going.

I hate to say it, but I kind of hope David takes a swing at the Longshot/Shatterstar parenthood thing.  He’s made some cracks about it on panel, but nothing serious yet.  Just because I’m curious how he’d work that into the whole tapestry he’s got going on.

Still looks to be my #1 X-Book.

Final thoughts on the reboot?

I’ll probably pick up the first issues of each, but currently only Legacy & X-Factor are on my actual pull list.  I may get Wolverine’s book if Quire & Toad are not too obnoxious.  Maybe Jubilee’s X-Men team.   Most likely no: X-Force & Generation Hope.  Everything in between is up in the air.

Here’s the full cover-merge spread:

And the breakdown/zooms:

I have to say that I’m really not feeling Shaw anywhere in an X-Book.  I never found him to have *any* redeeming characteristics (unlike Magneto, who’s had them for a long time, or the White Queen & Sage who were convincingly (to me) retconned (in the case of Sage) or had a pretty solid turnaround).  That’s not to say we couldn’t be seeing another White Queen turnaround here BUT.  Do we need it?  Is anything about Shirtless Shaw interesting enough to make it worthwhile?

Idie was my favorite cast member, so I’m pretty bummed to see her as the trade for Shaw.  Hopefully she’ll wind up in Wolverine’s team (as one might expect, given Schism so far) and not dead or in Limbo.

Still trying to wrap my head around how sticking Shaw with the mutant messiah is a good idea, from anyone’s perspective….

Well.

Psylocke (and possible Domino??) is pulling a Wolverin— er, double duty (as she’s also been revealed as being in X-Force, one of the team Wolverine/gold teams).  That’s interesting.  Especially if you’re a Psylocke fan.  I’m not a huge one, but I don’t dislike her (I have to admit, I do miss the ~1988 armored look though).

Mostly I’m happy to see Warpath back somewhere and Jubilee & Storm on a team.  This is pretty female heavy team too.  As in, extremely.  Probably top heavy too, knowing comic artists.  As others on the net  have pointed out, having Jubilee not on Wolverine’s side seems very strange, especially given the amount of effort he’s expended to help her lately (donating his blood to keep her sated, the stuff they just went through in the Wolverine & Jubilee mini-series, etc.).  I assume this will be a major plot point …

Having Domino out of X-Force, with Psylocke and potentially not pulling double duty could also set up some really interesting trust & subterfuge situations.  I wonder if Psylocke is here to take care of Jubilee for Wolverine?

I’m not understanding why Storm is not featured more prominently – other than that all the fliers in these promo posters are really tiny hovering figures.

Lose Domino (sorry, I don’t think she works here) and I’d be much more interested.

 Tell me that doesn’t look like a Brotherhood of Evil (Misunderstood?  Reformed?) Mutants in the making.  Magneto, Danger, Juggernaut & the White Queen.. oh and Cyclops and semi-amoral Illyana as afterthoughts.

And this is the flagship title?

I’m… “confused” would be an understatement.  I have to admit I’m surprised & impressed that they are letting the Juggernaut transfer stick.  It’s interesting to me in that normal dude + Juggernaut = fucking nuts.  So what happens when you have crazy tough mutant + Juggernaut?  I mean, does he even need a team?  Maybe the whole team is just to keep him in line?  He doesn’t have a rage face on so maybe he’s in control?  Why would Cytorrak leave him with the powers if he wasn’t a crazy rage-facer?  I guess I’ll have to read and see …

Still, I cancelled Uncanny from my pull with the relaunch – I’ll pick up the first issue at least (mostly because 1sts are a bitch to get back issues for if I ever decide to pick it back up), but nothing here reaches out and says “buy me!”.  Juggerlossus + Illyana comes close… but Danger says “nope!”.

Oh, Nate, you sure know how to ruin a cover with your shirtless self.

Abnett & Lanning have a huge stockpile of cred with me for the Marvel Cosmic stuff… but selling me on X-Man as a team member (especially this time) is going to take a lot of work.  Enough that I doubt even the awesome A&L.  That and a) there’s no Cannonball (WTF!?) and b) Magma is flying?  So she can fly now but we forgot that Sunspot can?  *confuzzled*

No Karma also makes me sad.  She’s one of those characters where I don’t find her powers particularly interesting (uber-limited, focused, telepathy) but I love her character.  She just has a … “presence” to me as a reader I guess, always has.

This is kind of a douchey cover in general.  Why do Warlock & Sunspot have those idiot-semi-villanous grins?  Why is Nate the central character?  Why is Magma flying?  I mean, she’s “Magma” not “Firestar” or “flying fire girl”.  Magma is heavy.  Rocks are heavy.  Please, please don’t make her some generic fire girl.

New Cypher is pretty interesting, Sunspot has always been one of my top 5 characters, and Dani is generally interesting.  Warlock really varies by writer.  Eh.  I’m in the middle on this one.  We’ll see how it goes.

Who, where: Me, at Lowe’s, looking for a replacement toiler flapper (new vocabulary word for the day) & shower head.

Who else: The guy that said it.

About what: In reference to my toilet!   (Trying to figure out the model…)

I know I’m not getting this across just right… but the way he said it was so chock full (what the hell does that mean!? Note to self: research!) of god damned awesome.

Manner:  With a straight face, thoughtfully, slightly wistfully.

He then went on to say something about like “That was their idea for dropping 1.6 fast”, or something to that effect.

BUT IT WAS ENGROSSING.

Seriously the guy at North Portland Lowe’s is like the best/most interesting plumbing guy ever because, in addition to seeming to know pretty much everything about plumbing – he also knows a shitload about plumbing history!  Yeah, let that sink in.

Moments like that make life slightly more interesting.

In conclusion: I haven’t yet been able to spot a model name/number (brand, sure) anywhere on our serene receiver of of all matters fecal.  So it could be “The Champion”… but maybe The Champion got tired of the media circus.  Even champions need quiet time.  [Insert all your bathroom jokes here.]