“Outrageous Fortune (Mind Games part 3 of 6)”
Writer: Karl Bollers
Artists: Carlo Pagulayan (p), Dennis Crisostomo (i)
Publisher: Marvel
Congratulations, Marvel! More specifically, well done to cover artist Greg Horn! Between them both it has taken them nine issues but they have finally managed to come up with a cover that actually has a picture of the titular character of this book! No more scantily-clad, sultry, buxom wenches. No more pubescent schoolgirls. This time around we actually get a regular looking young woman on the streets of downtown Boston. Sure, there’s no real facial resemblance between her and the Emma Frost of the comic itself but what do you expect - accuracy? C’mon, be reasonable!
Well, I’m sure that nobody can deny that Horn’s covers for the opening arc of the series, Higher Learning, helped to draw in some extra readers by using the lure of the modern Emma’s sex appeal on her behalf. As a 23 year-old heterosexual male however, I can assure you that I am above such cheap tricks and was already planning to buy the title before seeing any of the covers. Honestly! Ahem... Hopefully some of those readers stuck around to see out the story, which was a rather charming tale of Emma’s warped family life. Without stretching the boundaries of believability or good taste it managed to foreshadow Emma’s future villainous antics while establishing her as being essentially a good person. This latest arc, Mind Games, has been rather lacklustre so far. We’ve reached the halfway point and so far her plan to make it on her own in the big city – with more than a little help from her telepathic abilities - has found her shacked up with a dishwasher named Troy, frantically trying to win $10,000 at a casino in order to pay off a loan shark.
Naturally, given what she can do, Emma clears up at the poker table and they promptly pay back the loan shark, Lucien. The trouble is that Lucien has grown tired of waiting and of seeing his stooges, Milo and Stu, mess up every attempt to collect the money. So what is the appropriate etiquette for a loan shark in this situation? Why, simply ask you victim-cum-customer for 50% interest to be paid back in full by the morning! Troy, fearing any further reprisals and having just been evicted after Milo & Stu trash his apartment, decides to split for New York. Emma convinces him to return to the casino for another shot at cleaning house instead, and that’s when the real plot holes begin to arrive...
First of all, they go back to the exact same casino that they were in the day before. Despite never having been in a casino in my life, even I know that this is a definite no-no. Casinos are all too aware of who comes in, who leaves, who wins, who loses, and if you won big one night and went back the night after then alarm bells would be ringing as soon as you set foot in the door. It’s just the way it has to be when so much cash and so much crime flows through a place like that. This is addressed towards the end of the issue, to be fair, but I have trouble believing that a level-headed person like Emma would make such an error in judgement. I am certain that there is more than one casino in Boston for crying out loud.
Secondly, Emma claims that she can’t win the cash at the poker table like she did yesterday because there is a poker tournament going on. Fair enough, but even with a tournament going on surely there would be some poker tables open to the general public, or at least the chance to enter the tournament? Even if it would be too late to enter and no “official” tables, there are going to be a lot of poker players hanging around looking for some games after they are done. Talk some of them into a game! No, instead she decides to go and play the slot machines and shoot some craps instead – two games where her powers are ultimately useless! Hasn’t she heard of a little thing called Blackjack, or indeed any other card games apart from poker?? Obviously Karl Bollers hasn’t...
Thirdly, and this is the big fat one with a spoiler cherry on top, Emma tries to telepathically trick a casino worker, Sylvie, into changing a bus fare’s worth of chips into $5,000. Naturally, this is all recorded on security cameras and they are taken to see the owner, Mrs. Faulkner, before being thrown out. Now, presumably she is too scared to try a similar trick on Lucien for fear of what may happen. That much is understandable. Not at least trying to use the same trick on the Mrs. Faulkner owner is a major oversight though. Perhaps given the presence of Sylvie and two security guards it would not have worked but she should at least give it a shot. After all, she has managed to fool more than one person at the same time before now!
Still, there are some shining lights to be found here. Despite the clear lack of a bigger picture, Bollers writes his tunnel-vision story well. Troy comes over as the likeable yet idiotic slacker he is meant to be. Emma is clearly not in love with him but feels some sort of a connection, even mistakenly referring to him as her boyfriend at one point. She is also clearly oblivious to the ethical dilemmas a power like hers presents. She has no qualms about screwing over the casino not once but twice in order to save her own ass, even when her tricks cost Sylvie her job. This looks as though it will segue rather nicely into the downward moral spiral we all know comes her way sooner or later. The Lucien character introduced here comes over as a rather generic thug but, judging from that nasty scar on his left eye, there is more to him than meets the eye. Hopefully his full story can help the book recover from its recent slump in form and realise its full potential.
All in all there are no major gripes to be had. It’s just all rather bland at the moment, which is terribly annoying as I do really want to like this title. The first arc was enjoyable and the possibilities of this one are all too evident. For a tale set firmly in set continuity it has a great deal of creative freedom going for it at least until Emma finally stumbles onto the Hellfire Club, so seeing it wasted on stories that are lazily plotted and lack any real purpose irritates me, particularly on this title. As we have heard time and time again from Marvel, they expect this book to appeal to people who may not normally bother looking twice at a comic book. Those people are those delightfully strange creatures otherwise known to normal people as “women.” I can see where they may have got that idea from as this book revolves around a young female protagonist trying to make her way in the wide old world, cutting herself free of her meddlesome family and the life that was not meant for hers. It could work but it will need a lot more effort than this. Now we’ve got the covers fixed, can we start working on the interiors?
Oh yeah, one more thing - Peter Pan references should be banned!
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