FOXFIRE #4 – May 1996

Endgames

Credits:  Ian Edginton (plot), Dan Abnett (script), Kevin J. West (penciler), Philip Moy & Bob Almond (inkers), Edd Fear (letterer), Rob Alvord & Malibu (colors)

Summary:  Mourning Star and her Tradesmen soldiers follow Foxfire and her allies to the Marvel Universe.  Foxfire discovers that her powers have been temporarily disrupted by the transmat device.  While Punisher helps the heroes escape, Mustang is killed by one of the Tradesmen.  Eventually, Mourning Star catches up to Foxfire and attempts to steal her body.  Foxfire’s powers return tenfold and she melts her “mother” into a pile of goo.  Foxfire then erases the Punisher’s memory of the past few hours, and promises Dancer that she’ll use her new powers to take them back home.

Continuity Notes:  

• Last issue, Mourning Star’s goons were called the Custodians.  This issue, they’re the Tradesmen.
• Mourning Star has been harvesting young Ultra antibodies as a part of her scheme to replace her broken robot body.  She claims that the Tradesmen have given her the technology needed to swap bodies, so now she wants Foxfire’s.
• The mind-link Mourning Star triggered with Foxfire “somehow” opened up Foxfire’s “untapped reservoirs of control,” which is the explanation for her enhanced powers.

Review:  We’ve reached the end of Foxfire, surely the greatest legacy of “The Dark Phoenix Saga.”  A text piece in the back claims that this was a miniseries all along, and perhaps it was, but it does seem as if the entire Ultraverse line folded not long after this issue was released.  The text piece also tells us to look for Foxfire in upcoming issues of Ultraforce, which somehow reminds me of the hollow promises that Gunfire was going to play an important role in Justice League after his series was axed.

For the fourth issue in a row, the story feels the need to cram in an “untold tale” that really should’ve been told before this series began.  This time, the story flashes back to Mourning Star’s fight with her robotic husband, an event that apparently occurred fifty years ago and left her with a damaged robotic body.  This impaired robot somehow needed teen superhero antibodies to survive, but now that plot’s out-of-date, since she can simply steal her daughter’s body.  Somehow, there’s that word again, this leads to Foxfire reaching her true potential and becoming “the stepchild of the Phoenix.”  I suppose I should applaud Malibu/Marvel’s restraint for not using that as the subtitle of the series.  Actually, I’m surprised they didn’t, since this series all along was a pretty flagrant grab at X-completists’ dollars.  Of course, if you were looking for a book that honestly ties into the X-canon, you’re going to be disappointed.  And if you just want an entertaining superhero comic, you’re in for a mess.  I don’t have a real problem with Foxfire as a protagonist -- she’s thankfully not the Clueless knockoff I was expecting -- but she’s surrounded by half-formed plots that can’t withstand a small amount of scrutiny.  No one at Malibu seemed to know what was going on from issue to issue with this series.

What else is in the finale issue?  Let’s see…ah yes, the Punisher is still here.  And he contributes about as much as you expect.  This is also the Punisher during his “it's not a mid-life crisis” ponytail days, so I have even more motivation to pretend that this never happened.  The issue also features some of the ugliest lettering I’ve seen in a professional comic.  I don’t know if Edd Fear was using computer fonts in the previous issues, but this issue has a font so stiff and awkward it’s borderline Comic Sans.  The closing pages reveal the winner of some “We’ll Draw You in a Comic!” contest.  The results are predictably…1996.  I say we close out our look at Foxfire the Faux-Phoenix with this classic image:

FOXFIRE #3 – April 1996

Welcome to the Monkey House

Credits:  Ian Edginton (plot), Dan Abnett (script), Kevin J. West (penciler), Bob Almond & Philip Moy (inkers), Edd Fear (letterer), Rob Alvord & Malibu (colors)

Summary:  Foxfire awakens inside a cage, surrounded by young Ultras.  She’s welcomed by Mustang, who explains that power-inhibitors keep them in their cages.  Recalling the past few days, Foxfire remembers a cop named Tyburn shooting her with a tranquilizer.  Foxfire overpowers her cage’s inhibitor and then frees Mustang.  Close by, Jack Dancer is taunted by Mourning Star for trying to free her captives.  Foxfire and Mustang soon discover her father, who has been dismantled.  He explains that Mourning Star is Mariah, Foxfire’s dragoon mother, now corrupted by The Entity.  Her armed guards, the Custodians, arrive and destroy the remains of Foxfire’s father.  Jack Dancer leads the teens to a transmat terminal, which is hit by an energy blast as the trio teleports.  They arrive in New York, in the middle of one of the Punisher’s firefights.

Continuity Notes:  

• Jack Dancer, who may or may not be an established Ultraverse character, is immortal.  Apparently, he commits good deeds out of boredom.
• Foxfire is able to break free of her cage because she isn’t technically an Ultra.
• Apparently the dead body the police thought belonged to Foxfire’s father was one of Mastodon’s victims.  Except…there was no body; the police didn’t know if her father was alive or dead, only that he went missing during the Phoenix attack.
• Foxfire’s mother, previously believed dead, is responsible for pulling her father out of the timestream.  She was aiming for Foxfire and grabbed her former “husband” by mistake.

Total N00B:  The teleportation device is “used to link Earth with Godwheel,” whatever that means.  Later, Mourning Star says that the heroes aren’t “on the Godwheel” and have landed outside of the universe.

Miscellaneous Note:  The title of the issue is a reference to the Kurt Vonnegut book.

Review:  I seriously doubt the Punisher was that much of a sales draw by 1996, yet someone still had faith, since his one-page appearance is enough to merit the cover.  This issue exhibits more wonky issue-to-issue continuity, which has quickly become the hallmark of Foxfire.  The story opens with Foxfire awakening inside a cage, surrounded by the young Ultras that were featured in brief cameos in previous issues.  (One of them, the Chaotician, had a hole blown in his chest, but now we’re supposed to accept that the Ultras were merely being kidnapped.)  I’m fine with an in medias res opening, but the subsequent flashback just leaves more questions unanswered.  Foxfire explains: “When dad and I got back from the future, he disappeared.  The police found a body which they thought was his.  Of course, I was their main suspect...but I knew it wasn't my dad, ‘cause he's a bio-mucinoid, not flesh and blood.”  Okay…when did that happen?  The flashbacks to the events of the Phoenix Resurrection miniseries all have footnotes, but there’s nothing for these scenes.  Later, she claims, “Ultraforce cleared my name with the cops and I got assigned to a cop called Tyburn from the Juvenile Welfare Division.”  Oh, you did?  I love the creators’ commitment to the “Foxfire accused of murder” plot.  They were clearly so invested in it, they had to resolve the story in-between issues.

A few pages later, Foxfire is reunited with her father.  Since he’s a robot, he has nothing to do with the villain’s scheme of harvesting young Ultras’ antibodies, but as fate would have it, the evil mastermind turns out to be his sentient-energy-possessed robotic ex-wife, long believed dead.  Sure.  In another unseen story, Mariah (now at the point of her career where she’s christened herself “Mourning Star”) plucked Robot Dad out of the timestream by mistake while aiming for Foxfire.  This occurred during Foxfire’s unexplained, unseen journey back from the future into the present day.  At this stage, the number of “behind the scenes” events outnumbers what’s actually happened in the published series.  So far, Foxfire has snuck out of a police station, bumped into Ultraforce, and gotten kidnapped.  Her unseen adventures sound more stimulating.  

Daddy Robot has a death scene and the heroes escape, some Malibu continuity I don’t understand is tossed around, and suddenly the Punisher is making a guest appearance.  West’s interpretation of the Punisher is at least twenty years too young, which isn’t a huge surprise since his male characters don’t seem to have much of a range.  West’s art tends to be a blend of early Tom Grummett and Jeff Matsuda, and if you assume those two styles don’t blend particularly well, you’re right.  Foxfire herself usually looks okay, judged by the standards of the time, even though she’s occasionally too pneumatic this issue.  I could live with the art -- I wasn’t expecting an unofficial X-spinoff set in the Ultraverse to be penciled by Alex Toth -- but the overall storytelling in this series is appallingly shoddy.

FOXFIRE #2 – March 1996

Tunnel Vision

Credits:  Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett (writers), Kevin J. West (penciler), Philip Moy & Bob Almond (inkers), Patrick Owsley (letterer), Rob Alvord & Malibu (colors)

Summary:  Rose convinces Ultraforce that she’s a new hero, Foxfire, and not the runaway Rose.  The team splits up to locate Sludge and the feral monster, which they later realize is former Exiles member Mastodon.  Rose comprehends that Mastodon is only acting out of fear.  She changes back into her human form and encourages Mastodon to revert into his true form, a young child.  Black Knight tells Rose that Ultraforce won’t pursue her and encourages her to continue crime-fighting.  

Continuity Notes:  Another seemingly unrelated one-page scene features an Ultra named Mustang.  He’s apprehended by armed men.

Review:  Well, she does have a name now.  And I have to acknowledge that she didn’t pass out this issue.  Regardless, the series has wasted its opening arc on a series of gratuitous guest stars, while doing nothing to build up the main character or do even the basic things that need to be done when setting up a solo series.  Rose has no supporting cast, no job, no definable goals, and nothing to ground her in the present day.  She might as well be back in the future, fighting alien bugs.  The only real conflict that’s been introduced so far, Rose being falsely accused of her father’s murder, is casually brushed aside by Black Knight this issue.  She seemed to be an okay girl, so he lets her go, conveniently forgetting that she did lie about her identity when they met.  She’s innocent of the murders Mastodon committed, sure, but he has no reason to believe that Rose isn’t involved with her father’s disappearance.

The only moment that alleviated the boredom this issue was Black Knight’s conversation with Rose, which spells out the premise behind Ultraforce.  Per Black Knight:  “Ultraforce has a presidential mandate to police the Ultra community.  That means we get shot at by both sides.  Ultras who think we’re the bad guys and humans who think we’re just a figure head (sic).  … Humans have always been top of the food chain.  The day the Ultras came along, humans found there was something quicker and stronger and better than them suddenly…They’re scared of us.  We’re scared of them.  Unless the balance stays just right, it could tip over into anarchy.”  Get that…Ultraforce is the X-Men!  My natural assumption all along was that Ultraforce was Malibu’s answer to the Avengers, but this was the ‘90s…of course they aped the X-Men instead!  And why is Black Knight the one giving this speech?  He doesn’t have powers; just a magic sword, right?  Humanity’s not afraid of your magic sword and flying horse, Dane Whitman.

FOXFIRE #1 – February 1996

Interview with an Ultra

Credits:  Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett (writers), Kevin West (penciler), Philip Moy & Bob Almond (inkers), Edd Hendricks (letterer), Rob Alvord (colorist)

Summary:  Rose is interviewed by a detective, following the disappearance of her father.  As soon as the detective leaves the room, Rose activates her powers and flies away.  She returns to the ruins of her apartment and uses her powers to follow a trail invisible to the human eye.  Unbeknownst to Rose, an agent from the Juventus Clinic & Health Spa is tailing her.  Rose tracks footprints into the sewers and is soon attacked by a feral monster.  Another monster, Sludge, unexpectedly arrives to rescue her.  Rose passes out due to her injuries, and is confronted by Ultraforce when she awakens.

Continuity Notes:  

• Sludge is one of the original Ultraverse heroes, created by Steve Gerber as a ‘90s version of the muck-monster archetype.
• Rose is shocked to discover she bleeds blue blood.
• A one-page cutaway features Ultras named Thorn Boy, Chaotician, and Jack Dancer in one-panel scenes for an unexplained reason.

“Huh?” Moments:  Rose has returned to the present day with no explanation, following her last appearance in The Phoenix Resurrection: Aftermath.  Also, the path that she follows into the sewers, the one that no one has noticed, is a trail of gigantic footprints.

Review:  Foxfire begins its run as a regular series, although it would appear the entire Ultraverse line is canned just a few months after its debut.  I have absolutely no idea what was going on behind-the-scenes of this book, but it would appear that there’s been some last minute rethinking before the first issue was even completed.  A blurb on the final page of The Phoenix Resurrection: Aftermath told us that Rose’s story would continue in Foxfire #1, yet the character’s gone through an unrevealed journey through time in-between issues.  She’s also, somehow, been brought into custody as the police investigate the disappearance of her father.  Ignoring the continuity gap between stories, I’m willing to accept that Rose is going to have a hard time explaining the absence of her time-traveling robot father, but the conflict only leads to more confusion.  Rose returns to her former home, ostensibly to investigate the disappearance of her father…but she already knows what happened!  The damage from the Phoenix’s blast revealed his robotic nature, Rose passed out (something she does yet again this issue), and he took her to the future to join the human rebellion.  What does she hope to find at her old apartment?  

I briefly wondered if Foxfire #1 was completed before the Phoenix Resurrection event issues, but that wouldn’t explain the discrepancies.  If anything, having a complete Foxfire #1 in the drawer would’ve given the creators a specific goal to work toward and lessened the inconsistencies.  Instead, it reads as if no one knew what the other person was doing, even though this entire event has featured the same writing team.  It’s also possible that there’s a Rose appearance in-between Phoenix Resurrection and Foxfire #1 that explains some of this confusion, but it’s hard to ignore the blurb and hype page in The Phoenix Resurrection: Aftermath that tell the reader specifically to pick up Foxfire #1 to find out what happens next.  Was this going to be a sci-fi book set in a post-apocalyptic future, or My So-Called Life with superpowers?

Visually, Foxfire seems to have gone through another round of second thoughts.  The earliest preview images of Foxfire played up the cheesecake element, with Wizard and other fan press outlets promoting her as Marvel’s first “Bad Girl.”  

(I completely forgot there was a professional comic artist named “Fang,” by the way.)  That look is considerably toned down this issue, with Kevin West presenting a much less pervy interpretation of the hero.  West’s female characters do have a certain charm to them, evoking an early John Byrne look with some ‘90s influences, so I can’t say he’s a bad choice for the book.  West’s real weakness this issue seems to be civilian male figures, and there’s a dearth of those after Rose ditches the detective in the opening pages.  West spends most of the issue drawing a pretty girl and monsters, and it seems to suit his talents.

That doesn’t mean that the hints of cheesecake are totally gone however.  Rose, in her superheroine form, is essentially a nude female figure, so it’s not surprising that some artists can’t restrain themselves.

It’s actually not that bad of a joke, since this is the “back” cover, but I can’t imagine Marvel publishing something like this today without at least three days of internet backlash.

Speaking of that female faux-Phoenix form…it’s not hard to guess why she’s going to be called Foxfire, I just think it’s odd that she hasn’t picked up the name yet.  This is her big debut issue, after all.  Something of significance should’ve happened here.  Ultimately it’s a quick read, one that awkwardly co-exists with the allegedly important Phoenix miniseries, and doesn’t give the hero much to do outside of wandering around and passing out.  That’s a weak debut for anyone; I’m glad Marvel/Malibu rethought the “Bad Girl” angle, but it doesn’t seem as if anything’s replacing it.

THE PHOENIX RESURRECTION: REVELATIONS #1 – December 1995

Credits:  Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett (writers), Kevin West, John Royle, Randy Green, & Rick Leonardi (pencilers), Tom Wegrzyn, Phillip Moy, Rick Ketcham, & Jeff Whiting (inkers), Vickie Williams & Patrick Owsley (letters), Mike Tuccinard, Rob Alvord, & Malibu (colors)

Summary:  Rex Mundi, the “first among Ultras,” summons another team of metahumans to attack the Phoenix-possessed Amber Hunt.  The Exiles arrive to defend Amber, leading to a confrontation with Ultraforce and the X-Men.  Close by, Rose Autumn and her father watch the fight through their apartment window.  A stray blast buries her father under rubble, and Rose uses strength she didn’t know she had to rescue him.  She’s also shocked to discover her father has a cybernetic chest.  Rose suddenly conjures energy and becomes a virtual duplicate of Amber/Phoenix.  Rose’s powers burn out after one blast, but it’s enough to harm Amber.  The Phoenix Force leaves Amber and unexpectedly divides itself in two.  Amber reveals that the Phoenix split in two in order to find Rex Mundi and his female clone Regina.  The mothership requires both to leave Earth, where it will then travel to the sun to be reunited with its missing parts.  The heroes travel to the Bermuda Triangle and attack the mothership, freeing Rex and Regina.  Amber Hunt and an Ultra named Gate create a portal that sends the Phoenix Force billions of years into the past.  In a burst of energy, the Phoenix Force returns to the present day, recreating events that lead to the mothership discovering it.  On Earth, the heroes say their goodbyes and Gateway teleports the X-Men back home.

Continuity Notes:  A group of unnamed, unidentified characters joins Rose’s cyber-chested dad and teleports her away.  Rose becomes a major character in the Ultraverse later on.  At least, that was the plan…

I Love the ‘90s:  During the wrap-up, Jubilee drops an “As if!” after describing how Rex Mundi disappeared.  I’ll wager that the writers don’t understand how that slang is supposed to be used.

“Huh?” Moment:  Much of this issue makes little sense.  Gateway piloting the hi-tech hovercraft that arrives to take the heroes home at the end is probably my favorite ridiculous moment, though.

Gimmicks:  Alright, every issue of this miniseries is a #1!  That means they’ll all be worth money one day!

Review:  Ah, this is the unreadable train wreck I was expecting last issue.  I guess I should start at the beginning.  Amber/Phoenix floats in the sky while her “telepresence” travels to the Bermuda Triangle and absorbs the mothership’s insane plan.  It involves using the Phoenix Force to “drive the Earth into the sun” in order to reunite the ship with its parts that are somehow still existing within the heart of the sun.  The real goal of this gibberish is to up the ante in the fight and do a montage of volcanoes erupting across the globe, because the stakes always have to involve either the entire planet or all existence in these cross-continuity crossovers.  

Meanwhile, numerous fight scenes are breaking out.  If the goal of this crossover was to introduce Marvel fans to the Ultraverse characters, no one seems to have told the creators this issue, since hero after hero is popping up everywhere, fighting each other for reasons I can’t grasp.  For example, the enigmatic Rex Mundi summons a group of heroes to fight the Phoenix, and they’re soon opposed by another group of heroes (or maybe they’re villains) that are given no name or motivation.  The two groups fight while the X-Men and Ultraforce look on, and then Juggernaut and the Exiles arrive, along with Night Man, Mantra, and surely some other characters I’ve already forgotten.  Clearly, not all of these characters can serve a plot function, but it would seem to be Storytelling 101 to at the very least introduce them and provide some motivation for their actions.  Honestly, I thought some of these characters were parodies when they first appeared.  One group would seem to be an outright mockery of the Wildstorm designs of the era, while other heroes could easily pass as a caricature of the ‘90s Milestone heroes.  Yet, the story plays these fashion disasters straight, so I’m assuming the reader is supposed to as well.

The nonsense continues.  Rose Autumn, inexplicably, needs to be introduced again.  (Let’s forget that she was supposed to be in the hospital last issue.)  She appears just long enough to develop super-strength, discover her father is some manner of cyborg, and then turn into an alternate version of the Phoenix.  Sure, why not.  Then, after she collapses (the second time she’s done this in her two appearances), yet another group of mysterious strangers in gaudy outfits arrives to take her away.  Boy, with an introduction this good, you know Rose is bound to become the hot new Bad Girl of 1996!

The plot then veers into the weeds of Ultraverse continuity, with Rex Mundi and his clone/lover Regina (yup) now playing an integral role.  Rex Mundi, based on the exposition shoved into this issue, is the earliest of the Ultras, and he has extra-special Ultra stuff inside him that the mothership needs.  Rex has created a female clone of himself as a lover (and named her after a Waffle House waitress, apparently), which the story uses to now justify the existence of two Phoenixes, because heaven knows this issue isn’t impenetrable enough.  The heroes enjoy a quickie trip to where the mothership crash-landed millions of years ago, which is naturally the Bermuda Triangle (See?  That explains everything!), and more pointless fights happen.  The Beast questions if it’s okay to destroy the ship if it means Rex and Regina also die, but everyone tells him to just shut up and go along with the plot.  Rex and Regina turn out to be okay, the mothership loses power, and the united heroes are somehow able to physically drive the Phoenix Force into a space portal.

The ending is more gibberish.  The Phoenix is sent billions of years into the past, it doesn’t appreciate the trip, so it uses its infinite cosmic powers to return to the present.  Powers that couldn’t resist forgotten Malibu characters like Topaz just a few pages earlier, mind you.  That leads to a repeat of a scene from the previous issue, the one that had the mothership discovering the Phoenix, which started this entire fiasco in the first place.  So, has a time loop been completed, setting everything right in the world…or is the whole point to show that the heroes’ victory has been a hollow one?  Since when was this story about time travel, anyway?  What’s the point, outside of scaring me with the prospect of a sequel?  It’s bad enough to know that this event has one more chapter to go, and a spinoff series after that…