While on holiday recently, I found a little time for reading some comics! I adore comics as a medium: they can combine the best of both worlds of books and film, with all the capacity for visual impact as cinema, but also lending themselves to individual voices and exploring psychological interiority like novels. Not that all comic avail themselves of these opportunities, of course. But the best of them combine big ideas and emotions with visual imagination and literary ambition.

So what have I been reading and what did I think of it? (Possible spoilers ahead, though I’ve tried to avoid major details).

Kieron Gillen’s ‘Die’ and the lure of escapism

One that’s particularly got inside my head has been reading the first volume of Kieron Gillen’s Die. It’s a fascinating look at the emotional and psychological dynamics of escapism. The plot is a bit like a dark take on Jumanji, with a group of teenagers getting sucked into an RPG, eventually escaping traumatised, and then getting drawn back in 25 years later as adults. Gillen has actually written beta RPG rules for Die so it can be run as a game, which I’d be intrigued to have a go at.

Growing up, I would for a long time happily have thrown in my ordinary life to go to Narnia or travel through time and space in the TARDIS. I find it all too understandable and relatable when fantasy seems more appealing than the messy realities around us. Worlds of beauty and enchantment, with simple problems, and clear delineations of Good and Evil. Harnessed rightly, stories of such fantastic worlds can refresh us to better engage our complex everyday lives. But fantasy can be ways to indulge unhealthy desires, to cultivate a false sense of moral superiority, or to avoid problems we have a duty to address.

As an adult I no longer feel the same desire for fantasy to become reality. I am fortunate enough to have a family, good friends and community, plus interesting, purposeful work, and a faith that gives me a sense of ultimate meaning (some might see the Christian faith as another form of escapism, of course, but I believe there are rational grounds for seeing it as a way into deeper reality). But I still love stories in the fantasy mode, and the escape they can provide.

A lot of Die is deconstructive of fantasy tropes, but as well as teasing out some of  ways fantasy can facilitate destructive escapism, it also captures some of the beauty of fantasy. The artwork is striking and the themes compelling. I look forward to the next volume!

Jonathan Hickman’s ‘House of X’ and ‘Powers of X’ shaking up the X-Men

I’ve also been intrigued by Jonathan Hickman’s new House of X and Powers of X comics, which promise to shake up the place of mutants in the Marvel Comics universe. I love the X-Men as a concept and group of characters, but I find it frustrating that they frequently get reset to a particular status quo as a persecuted minority.

I really enjoyed Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, which pushed the story in some fascinating new directions, exploring what it meant for mutants to evolve their own culturally ascendant subculture, for example, and the challenges of running a school for mutants where the next generation develop their own, alternative ideas to those being taught by Xavier and team.

Hickman looks to have a bold, big ideas approach to the X-Men that I find very appealing. In House of X #1, we have Xavier taking a new approach to mutant-human relations, with an independent mutant nation of Krakoa and a decidedly ominous sense of foreboding. In Powers of X #1 (a play on powers of 10) the scope is opened up to 10, 100, and 1000 years in the future. House of X #2 cleverly recontextualizes the whole of X-men history in a way that will feel familiar to fans of Kate Atkinson or The Good Life, though I wonder how much sense the details of X-Men history will make in light of it.

There are lots of intriguing pieces being put on the board, and some tantalising religious and Biblical allusions that foreground the question of humanity’s goodness or otherwise. Are we as a species eternally trapped in cycles of prejudice, hatred and violence? Are we fit to exercise dominion in the world, to return to the language of Genesis?

My only concern at the moment is that actual character motivations are perhaps lost among the mysteries – one of the sometimes weaknesses of the otherwise brilliant Doctor Who and Sherlock writer Steven Moffat. I hope there will be satisfying pay offs character-wise when people’s agendas become clearer. But if Hickman can ground the big ideas in character-based conflicts, it looks set to be not only an exciting shake-up for the mutant world and wider Marvel universe but a thrilling story too.

I generally only follow comics in fits and starts, usually catching up with Marvel periodically with a month’s subscription to Marvel Unlimited. But this is one storyline I’m eager to keep up with, and look forward to discussing further!

Are you a comics fan? What have you been reading lately? Let me know in the comments below or on social media!