X-Men Annuals (Blue & Gold)

I've never been a fan of annuals. They're a neat tradition in comic books, but for the most part I find them to be missed opportunities.

I recently caught up with the annuals for X-Men: Blue and X-Men: Gold. My thoughts on Blue and Gold can be found here. TLDR version: Blue is my favorite ongoing X-Book (apart from Astonishing) and Gold has been mostly a generic dud.

Strangely, UNBELIEVABLY even, the opposite is true for the annuals. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 is not really an annual in the traditional sense, but instead it's part one of a crossover titled Poison-X featuring Venom, cashing in on that Venom movie trailer brand recognition. It's written by Cullen Bunn, who writes the regular series, but it lacks the electricity that defines it. It feels more like a treatment for a story, moving through the stages of the narrative: something happens with symbiotes, get Venom to help, go to space world, encounter bad guys. This isn't bad in-and-of itself, it just lacks the grace that Bunn achieves with the snappy break-neck momentum of Blue.

If the goal was get eyes on Venom as a property, it works. I've never read Venom. I really only know him from the 90's cartoon and Raimi's masterpiece, Spiderman 3 (I'm serious it's the best one, fight me). I dig the way Venom is presented as a constant conversation with himself as a singular whole: the symbiote + Eddie Brock. Otherwise, the annual is pretty forgettable. I'm mostly dreading that I now have to read two issues of Venom in order to make sense of the upcoming X-Men: Blue #21-22. Maybe I'll just skip the Venom parts. It's not that hard to figure out what happens in these things, anyway.

X-Men: Gold Annual #1 is the best Gold has been, hands down. It's an Excalibur reunion (obviously, from the cover) that quickly gets Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Prestige over to the U.K. to see Meggan and Captain Britain's new baby. It's the kind of character work executed with a light touch that Gold has lacked. Writer Guggenheim includes a throwback villain that is so forgettable no one remembers who he is, which feels like a good joke at the expense of editorial's demand for constant nostalgia trips to the 1990's. The issue made me long for what Gold could be, so maybe Guggenheim has wanted to tell these stories all along, but is required to face-off his team against a string of forgettable references to the past. But here I'm speculating. Maybe Gold will get better from here on out? Only time will tell.

references:

1. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 w.Cullen Bunn p.Edgar Salazar Pub. Jan. 24, 2018 Read 2/9/18
2.  X-Men: Gold Annual #1 w.Marc Guggenheim, Leah Williams p.Alitha Martinez Pub. Jan. 10, 2018 Read 2/9/18
3. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 cover art by Nick Bradshaw.
4. X-Men: Gold Annual #1 cover art by Alan Davis