While the 2014 Annual and X-Mas Special featured multiple standalone yarns in each issue, IDW takes a different tactic with the 2015 installments, part of the new Season 11 banner. Both issues feature one double-length story, and while the Annual’s story is a standalone set during the heyday of the TV series, the X-Mas Special heavily ties into the events of Season 11.
The Annual (July) is a bit of a breather before Season 11 proper (which launched in August), as regular scribe Joe Harris allows Michael Raicht to take a crack at “The X-Files.” “Most Likely To …” has elements of Season 1’s “Lazarus” and – even more so — Ray Garton’s short story “Paranormal Quest,” from the June 2015 collection “Trust No One.” Due to the close release dates of “Paranormal Quest” and “Most Likely To …,” it’s almost certain that Garton and Raicht were unaware of each other’s works.
The fictional TV show in Raicht’s story is called “Ghost Encounter Survivors.” A husband-and-wife team, Tristan and Kelly, explores haunted houses, trading in on their personal background: As high school students, their friend Colin Mathews either died or vanished in a haunted house they were exploring.
In an unusual start to an X-File, Mulder makes himself a part of the action, pretending to be Colin at the 20-year class reunion in 1999 in Marcellus, N.Y. Although Tristan and Kelly know he’s not Colin, Mulder’s brash action allows him to delve into the case and pick up clues. Raicht does a nice job showing the relationship between the coy Mulder and the supposedly put-upon Scully, who complains about Mulder dragging her into this charade yet also is intrigued by the mystery.
“Most Likely To …” doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a just-plain-fun read nonetheless.
Harris’ “Season 11 X-Mas Special” (December) should ideally be read as part of the Season 11 narrative, after Issue 5. As with most of Harris’ “X-Files” works, it’s meticulously crafted and centered on the godlike Gibson Praise’s manipulations of various people and groups. By the end of the story, I still didn’t know Gibson’s plan – we’re not supposed to know yet – but I enjoyed the ride well enough.
The highlight is that the Lone Gunmen are prominently featured. Langly and Frohike get abducted by gray aliens, and Harris indulges in some dark humor. Frohike’s “Listen up, butt probers!” is almost as good as his threat of an “ass-paddling” back in the “Lone Gunmen” TV series. But overall, this is a serious piece, as we see that Gibson is willing to kill not only obvious baddies (the faceless aliens, who are enemies of the grays, who seem to be Gibson’s allies), but also innocent people. He offs a planeload of innocents just for the sake of landing a plane. And he theoretically could have just mind-wiped them all, as that’s what he does with our reunited heroes’ – Scully finds Mulder, and Byers finds his pals — at the story’s end.
I think Gibson’s mind-wiping power – combined with his ability to yank people out of the past and into the present, as he does to Krycek in Season 10 – presents an intriguing possibility for Harris to use time-manipulation to square the comics narrative (where M&S return to the X-Files beat in 2013) with that of the TV miniseries (where they return to the job in 2016).
The final page of “Season 11 X-Mas Special” shows us a human woman who had been narrating the whole thing from what sounded like an alien’s perspective: “Allow them their appearances and their holiday lies … our moment is at hand.” If this were a TV episode, I’d be able to tell who the woman is supposed to be, but in comic form, I’m not sure. The art by Matthew Dow Smith is, as always, a perfectly moody accompaniment to Harris’ writing, but if this is supposed to be a character we’re familiar with from the narrative, I simply can’t tell. I think the mystery is intentional; when Krycek was revealed in a Season 10 issue, it was done simply with a drawing. Editor Denton J. Tipton admitted in a letters column that he wanted readers to figure out on their own that it was Krycek, rather than spelling it out with words.
At any rate, in my next post, it’s on to Season 11 proper. I’ll no doubt get my answers there.