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The X-Files: Season 10 (IDW) #19-20 – G-23 (Review)

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Darren

This June, we’re going to be taking a look at the current run of The X-Files, beginning with the IDW comic book revival and perhaps taking some detours along the way. Check back daily for the latest review.

One of the more underrated aspects of The X-Files: Season 10 is the care that writer Joe Harris takes to emulate the structure and tone of a regular season of The X-Files.

There are obvious structural differences, of course. Twenty-five issues cannot possibly correspond to twenty-five episodes of television, and the comic ran for over two years rather than across nine months. Nevertheless, Harris works hard to ensure that the comic book series adopted a structure rather similar to that of the television series. The X-Files: Season 10 has a flow to it that feels vaguely like the structure of those classic nineties seasons, albeit with fewer individual stories due to the nature of the medium.

Ol’ green eyes is back…

Believers was an epic mythology season premiere, akin to The Blessing Way and Paper Clip or Redux I and Redux II. Pilgrims was a big mid-season mythology adventure like Nisei and 731 or Piper Maru and Apocrypha. Elders is an epic game-changing season finale, like The Erlenmeyer Flask or Anasazi or Requiem. Even stand-alone character-centric stories like Being for the Benefit of Mister X or More Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man recall episodes focusing on supporting characters like Zero Sum or En Ami.

With that in mind, G-23 is very much the weird mind-bending off-format episode that tends to appear towards the end of the season. Indeed, Harris boasted on Twitter that the end of the season would “include an… off-beat story.” In that light, G-23 feels very much like an affectionate nod to trippy stories like Demons, Folie à Deux and Field Trip. Indeed, it is something of a precursor to the positioning of Babylon within the revival series.

Poster child…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: g-13, g-23, joe harris, marijauna, mulder, seventies, sixties, the x-files, tom mandrake, x-files | 2 Comments »

The X-Files/30 Days of Night (Review)

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Darren

This January, to prepare for the release of the new six-part season of The X-Files, we’re wrapping up our coverage of the show, particularly handling the various odds and ends between the show’s last episode and the launch of the revival.

The X-Files/30 Days of Night is the most satisfying X-Files story of the interregnum between The Truth and My Struggle I.

The comic book miniseries is notable for a number of reasons. It is the simultaneously the last X-Files comic to be published by Wildstorm and the first X-Files comic to be published by IDW. It is the first comic book crossover between X-Files characters and another established comic book franchise, and it crosses over directly through Mulder and Scully rather than using the Lone Gunmen to insulate the franchise. It is also the first X-Files comic to be illustrated by Tom Mandrake, who would later work with Joe Harris.

Darkness falls…

There are other reasons that The X-Files/30 Days of Night stands out. The comic is the work of a creative team (much) more strongly associated with 30 Days of Night than The X-Files, and there is a sense the comic services that franchise more than The X-Files. Barring the first twelve-issues of Stefan Petrucha and Charles Adlard’s Topps run, which was really more of a series of shorter interlocking stories, The X-Files/30 Days of Night is also the longest single X-Files comic book story published to this point in the franchise’s history.

It is also just really good.