GENERATION X #8 - #11, October 1995- January 1996

I’ve mentioned earlier that none of my local stores carried Generation X when it was released (I wonder if they didn’t know that it was an X-book because the X was at the end of the title). Some nearby towns had comic shops, so I was able to pick up the first year’s worth of issues, but eventually I just gave up collecting it after missing so many issues. After purchasing many of the missing issues from the discount bins over the years, I now have a full run up to issue #25. I’ll do capsule reviews of the issues I bought as back issues, so that I can still give an overview of the entire line.

#8 (Lobdell/Cruz/Buckingham/Milgrom/Buccellato/Electric Crayon/Comicraft) – The Irish fantasy storyline begins, as the team investigates the disappearance of Banshee’s home, Cassidy Keep. The cast ends up separated in a fantasy world, which probably would’ve looked impressive under Bachalo’s pencils, but isn’t very remarkable as drawn by Cruz. Lobdell is obviously trying to do something whimsical and fun, but the art really gets in the way. I don’t know if it was in the plot or not, but a fight between some knights and Chamber and Synch ends with bloody decapitations, which doesn’t seem right. I’ll point out again that Cruz has his moments, but they’re undermined by mistakes like the drawing of a girl on page six who’s nine feet tall.

#9 (Lobdell/Grummett/Buckingham/Milgrom/Buccellato/Electric Crayon/Comicraft) – Tom Grummett debuts as fill-in artist, turning in a more consistent job. His work here is cartoonier than his normal look, but it still looks very traditional compared to the art in the earlier issues. This issue concludes the fantasy storyline, as Chamber uses his powers to energize the “Glamour Machine”, which somehow revives the fantasy world and returns Cassidy Keep to our dimension. There’s not a lot that stands out here, although Skin’s confrontation with a dragon is amusing. The dragon's response to Skin’s threats is to continually fall down laughing, which reminds me of something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. I think the art was supposed to carry a lot of this storyline, but the magical landscapes and mythical creatures are mostly lifeless.

#10 (Lobdell/Grummett/Buckingham/Milgrom/Buccellato/Pennington/Fern/Electric Crayon/Comicraft) –The mystery from Banshee’s dream in issue #7 begins to be resolved here, as Banshee is nearly killed in the present by an unknown foe. While Gen X tracks down his assailant, Emma Frost enters his mind to find answers. Lobdell introduces some strange continuity here, as it’s revealed that Magneto helped Banshee track down the mutant serial killer twenty years ago. Emma begins to wonder if Banshee had something to do with Eric Lehnsherr’s transformation into Magneto. I really have no idea why the X-books get so hung up on revealing that all of the established characters knew each other before their first appearances, but it’s always annoyed me. The end of the issue reveals that Omega Red was the attacker, which will tie another existing character to Banshee’s backstory. Like most of the previous issues, there’s not a lot of plot, but Lobdell does handle the characterization well by focusing on Jubilee’s concern for the now comatose Penance, and Emma’s newfound respect for Banshee.

#11 (Lobdell/Dezago/Semekis/Milgrom/Lanning/Buccellato/Electric Crayon/Comicraft) – Now, another fill-in artist shows up, while a second writer helps with the script. It really feels like the series is just marking time until Bachalo returns at this point. Emma continues to go through Banshee’s memories and returns to the moment he was dreaming about in issue #7. The shadowy serial killer is revealed to be Arkady, shortly before he was transformed into Omega Red. Oddly enough, Arkady’s taunt about Banshee killing him “again” is repeated in this issue, even though this is supposed to be their first meeting. This doesn’t do a lot to dispel the notion that Lobdell was making up his mysteries as he went along. The idea that Banshee knew Arkady "twenty years ago", before he became Omega Red, creates a continuity problem, since X-Men #7 refers to Wolverine's previous fight with Omega Red as happening thirty years ago (twice, even). I also have no idea what Emma was supposed to be doing inside Banshee’s mind in the first place, since she basically just observes some of his memories and then decides that he’s stable enough to return to his own body. Most of the action in this issue comes from Chamber facing down Omega Red, which doesn’t produce a very interesting fight scene. Like most of the issues of X-Man so far, the conflict in this issue ends when Chamber’s psionic powers explode and blast the bad guy away. It’s not much of a resolution for the mediocre storyline. It really seems like this series lost a lot of its momentum early on.