Years ago, before his falling-out with Marvel, he wrote a pretty decent New X-Men series where he introduced his character Fantomex, a pseudo-French mutant assassin clad entirely in white, in part inspired by an obscure series of trashy French novels from 100 years ago featuring a bad guy called Fantomas. And, because I’m a huge Morrison fan (and, to a lesser extent, Richard Sala, who’s also clearly a fan of these books), that’s all it took for me to pick this one up! But, to be fair, a novel about a prototypical supervillain thief doesn’t sound half-bad, right – it could be fun? Bah! It wasn’t. It’s sooooo bad!
Following in the wake of the popular Scarlet Pimpernel, Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre’s derivative Fantomas is about one-dimensional idiot aristocrats murdering one another while the most bland, generic literary detective ever tries to figure out whodunit. The motivations and murders are instantly forgettable, the characters are indiscernible, they all sound alike and seem to share a handful of braincells among them, the dialogue is laughable, the scenarios preposterous, there’s no direction to the rambling, incoherent story, no point, no nothing – I didn’t care about anything, it’s all garbage, all the time!
Fantomas himself barely figures in the story – at least by that name. To be honest I couldn’t spoil this one if I tried as I’ve already forgotten which character was secretly Fantomas. One of the dunces, which is to say any of them. But the incompetent writers fail at the most basic writing lesson which is show don’t tell and whenever Fantomas is mentioned (which is surprisingly little in a book seemingly about him) we’re only ever told of his evil deeds and never see them. Shame that he turned out to be such a crummy non-character.
One character is so witless he can’t tell his own sixty-something year old father from someone half his age wearing a disguise! Overwrought, pitiful melodrama pervades every worthless page while one scene in maybe fifty advances the stagnant plot – it’s such a tedious, frustratingly dull read. If this drivel proves anything, it’s that any novel will be considered a classic given enough time passes. I bet a hundred years from now James Patterson’s dogshit will be in the Penguin Classics range!
The only reason I pushed myself through was to teach myself a lesson about impulse buys in an effort to stop myself doing that kinda thing in the future. And did I learn from this torturous experience? I hope so. (Evil Me: That’s what he thinks! MoohoohahaHAHAHA!!!!) Damn you, Evil Me – you take that item out of the eBay basket!! I don’t care if it’s going for pennies! Oh gawd, I’m gonna get another badly packaged book in the post aren’t I…
Fantomas is boring nonsense from start to finish. Zero entertainment value, zero literary value – I recommend Morrison’s New X-Men over this tripe!
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