Generation X Bachelo is Back!

About three months after the Age of Apocalypse, Bachelo took a break from Gen X, and went to do a DC book I believe, can't remember the title. Tom Grummet, among others, took over pencils for the time being. But now, issue #17, Bachelo marks his triumphant return. Although Scott Lobdell is a great writer, one of the 90's best, he and Bachelo define the book as a team. Without Chris, Scott Lobdell was able to keep my attention-- not only that but accelerate the story impressively, but still, without the promise of a return from Chris, I may not have been able to hang on.

I am now on issue #19. In recent issues, the White Queen has taken the students to an old estate up in Canada. In September of '96, when this issue was published, Marvel was in the final stages of rising action for the company-wide Onslaught crossover. Emma was influenced vaguely by Onslaught, and brought the students here to keep them safe from him. She is stricken with guilt from the death of her previous students, the Hellions, back in Uncanny X-Men #281. So here she has them under loose mental control, keeping the students sedated. Toad lurks around the estate as well, plotting something evil of course. Why he happens to be there, I don't know yet.

Anyway, Bachelo's art is filled with a multitude of psychedelic detail, mixed with sharp lines that capture the character's expressions in unique way. There are ambiguous references, a copy Julius Caesar is barely noticeable piled under rolling hills of folderol. Numerous frogs, and amphibious types of creatures (which has always been a kind of tenebrous theme of his art in this book), act as spies for Toad. Thus they transcend from sort of a surrealistic fourth wall breach to characters with an active role within the story. This invitation to the reader to enter the realm of fantasy created by Lobdell and Bachelo is precisely why the title is so enduring; 10 years later and I still connect with it the same way I did when I was a teenager. Actually better.