Mulder Are You All right?

Joe Harris & Matthew Dow Smith “X-Files Season 11, Volume 1” (IDW, 2016)

Now that we have a televised season 10, is this season 12? I suppose that strictly speaking the comics are no longer canon (were they ever?).  My own feeling is that given the absolute mess of continuity that is the original run of X-Files, fans shouldn’t worry too much about what is or is not canon (or even what the conspiracy actually is).

I think this story is one that it’s important not to spoil.  So much of the enjoyment of the X-Files was the confusion & sense of interactive myth making.  You didn’t know what to expect, or know what twist was coming.

I really liked this volume. It felt like the actual X-Files.  There’s some shadowy machinations going on, there are horrific characters.  Mulder being on a farm felt like a throwback to his days infiltrating bee farms.

Just Like Clinton & Bush

Joe Harris & Colin Lorimer “Millennium” (IDW, 2015)

The first thing that you need to know is that this is a crossover between the X-Files & the Millennium spinoff.  There’s a cursory attempt to remind you of some plot points, but basically if you haven’t watched the shows, you’re going to be lost right out of the gate.

Are you still with me? If you’re someone like me who watched both shows (& the occasional rerun), then you’ll be good to go, even if you haven’t seen any recently or read any of the comics.

The plot really isn’t that important here.  It’s more about the various characters and the tone.  Harris does a great job of replicating the dark paranoid tone of the Millennium series.

Colin Lorimer has an unenviable task – he has to reproduce images of actors that we watched on our televisions for many many nights.  Fortunately he does a fine job.  All the characters are identifiable as the characters that we know, while the action is clear and understandable at all times.

I enjoyed Millennium, but would hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wasn’t familiar with the TV shows.