Multiple Man: It All Makes Sense in the End

Multiple Man #1-5

by Matthew Rosenberg, Andy MacDonald (Illustrator)

A handful of people's favorite X-Man - Jamie Madrox - was alive for a while. Then he was dead. Now he's not. But he will be again if he doesn't kill himself trying to make sure he doesn't die. It makes sense when you read it. Trust us. In his fight to not die, Jamie has stumbled across a threat even greater than his own death, but fixing it might make it worse. Can he save the world from himself? On top of all that, the X-Men are mad at him now. And a mysterious new group of foes is after him, too. We can't tell you who they are, but they're pretty great. COLLECTING: MULTIPLE MAN 1-5

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, X Men, Graphic Novels Comics, Superheroes, Comic Book

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2018

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

"I haven’t always been a writer. My parents are writers and my brother is a writer, and I resisted that as long as I could. When I was 17, I hopped in a band’s van and I went on tour for a summer, and that was it, that was what I wanted to do. I ran a record label for 10 years, a small indie punk label. I did everything in music that you can do that doesn’t involve having musical ability. Eventually the music business, probably in a similar way to comics, will just start to break your heart, and I realized one day that I kind of hated music. I was resigned to thinking, if I’m going to be involved in music forever, I’m going to hate it for the rest of my life. I just stopped. I stopped having any sort of business with music, any involvement.

I read comics my whole life, so I just naturally fell back into another medium that is marginalized and hard to make a living in."

Source: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles...

Writer of comics WE CAN NEVER GO HOME, SECRET WARS JOURNAL, OUR WORK FILLS THE PEWS, 12 REASONS TO DIE, & MENU.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess having the powers to multiply yourself means you’ll at least never be lonely. Beyond that, it’s not as if I’m going to produce smarter, better looking, more “gifted” duplicates of myself, just more of me.

So Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, normally a hoot of a character as part of the group dynamic, has his own book. On one hand, for me anyway, this is pretty cool. On the other hand, take a look at the title, “It All Makes Sense in the End” means I’m going to probably really work my brain reading this thing and that doesn’t bode well.



Mr. Madrox was comic book dead, but he got better. Unless you’re Earth 616 Uncle Ben, they usually do.



Mr. Madrox has tendency to piss off the X-Men…



…and as this is a book that involves time travel into the future, it definitely won’t endear him to anybody.



Hey, he’s got a Hulk.

It seems that an evil Mr. Madrox has taken over in the future, but all is not lost because there’s a resistance movement.



And he’s got the head of Forge to help out with science-y stuff.



If you dig a bunch of time loops and extra Mr. Madrox primes (there should be only one Madrox prime where all duplicates hail from, just strike him and boom - dupe!) then you’ll dig this story.

What does happen when you have more than one Madrox prime? Let’s ask Hank McCoy, one of the top five smartest dudes in the Marvel universe.



Heh.

Does it “make sense in the end”?

If you squint and turn the book sideways. Sorta. Kinda.

Bottom Line : For good or for ill, it seems that every other book I’ve picked up from the library has been penned by Matthew Rosenberg, who can deliver the funny mildly amusing, but seems to run out of gas with the whole plot your comic book run thing. I’ve always liked Jamie Madrox as a character, but this collection is a disappointment.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Madrox was dead, to begin with...'

... and from there it gets all wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey and we end up pretty much exactly where we started but with a staggering body count.

Nice art, though.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take one of the quirkiest X-Men in Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man and put him in the hands of a quirky writer, Matthew Rosenberg. Then add lots and lots of time travel. A timey-wimey, good time ensues. Yes, you will be confused at times. Yes, your questions will be answered. As the title says, It all makes sense in the end.

[Tiag⊗ the Mutant · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the Terrigen Mist killed the Multiple Man, one of Madrox's dupes is found barely alive, he gets cured by Hank McCoy, but not entirely, he realizes he is about to die no matter what and so he decides to steal Bishop's timetravel device to jump into the future and find a cure to his death, and that's when all hell breaks loose.

If you've been reading the X-Men comics for a while, I can already guess what you are thinking, "more time travel stories? here we go again" but hear me out, this one stood out from the rest. Matthew Rosenberg has a quirky sense of humor that goes along well with the character of Madrox, I chuckled through the whole thing, he managed to deliver good explanations on why things happened the way they did on the multiple timelines with the story going back and forth on a nice pace with plenty of twists and turns that made my brain feel funny in a good way, and as the title says, it all makes sense in the end.

[Marco · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should have been a perky, fun story about time travel, but Rosenberg tried waaaaay too hard to accomplish that and failed miserably. Between this miniseries and the one about the New Mutants my opinion of him as a writer is now at rock bottom.

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multiple Man is BACK! Or is he? Matthew Rosenberg might answer those questions for you here.

So Multiple Man is about Jamie returning to the spotlight. To get the leader of X-Factor back into all our lives. Right off the bat you're introduced to a dupe who survived even though the prime Jamie has died. In doing so he goes to the future to try to change things, and we all know X-men and the future jump forward and jump back can only mean one thing...we're in for a trippy ass adventure.

Good: The twist and turns are usually always fun and over the top. I can promise this, you won't see atleast some of these things coming. I thought the humor was spot on, and reminded me why I loved Jamie so much. The art did it's job, everyone looked pretty good.

Bad: I didn't love the ending. I get it, and it comes and goes as easy as this series started. Answers are left in the wind, hoping that you might return later. Also, the jumping into different time lines can get silly.

Overall, a little fun mini. I didn't love it liked I hoped but with Rosenberg's fun dialogue and never boring plot, it's atleast always fun. A 3 out of 5.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting five-part Limited Series that essentially pokes fun at time travel stories, unfortunately bringing back and using Jamie Madrox. After all Peter David's fine work on the character... this is essentially a Jamie Madrox Point One... but it is funny-ish at times and the play with time travel, although not original is a good read.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jamie dies way too often. I mean he fell to both Legacy and Terrigen, the two great (repetitive) diseases of the X-Men. And now he's back, again. Which is good, because PAD made him one of the most intriguing characters in the X-Men stable.

This time around, Matthew Rosenberg asks the question: what if Madrox could travel in time? Yeah, it's as horrifying as it sounds. There's lots of delightful timey-wimeyness, with almost everyone being time-displaced dupes of Madrox (of course!).

Unfortunately, Rosenberg goes too over the top in this story. It's highly slapstick, and ultimately it feels pretty shallow, like the whole series (literally) doesn't matter.

Still, it's great to see Jamie again, until he gets killed by the next X-catastrophe.

[Frédéric · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. It doesn’t.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4

Well I liked it. I was a little shocked at the low reviews, but the joys of subjectivity. I enjoyed the twisting narrative and it was refreshing to read something different. I had never heard about this character until James Franco was set to star in a film version, prior to Disney buying Fox of course.

Why the 4?

Crazy storyline, just insane. I was of the assumption the character was going to copy himself, that clearly was thrown out the window early on. I'm clearly in a tiny minority, that enjoyed this volume. But if you find yourself eager to read something from the least popular character list. This might hit the spot.

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Props for experimenting, but this thing was a mess from a character I thought I would like with some comedy that does not really hit with consistency at all. Cool power though.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was pretty dumb on the whole. Tries way to hard to be cute. Does not, in fact, make sense in the end. I really like the character of Jamie Madrox and this miniseries does him no favors.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

It really doesn't, though.

[Charlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5: See Simone's Plastic Man on how to do a quirk character right.

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

(This one is technically the last book of my 2017/18 x-comics readthrough as it was the last one that I preordered but that really only matters to the one or two people who paid attention to that crazy ordeal so I digress...)

I love Multiple Man. Madrox has been one of my favorite x-characters since the early 90s. His place in the absolutely fantastic X-factor investigations run cemented his spot on my modern x-favorites as well.

And then he disappeared. And was brought back only to die a few panels later in one of the worst deaths of the absolutely stupid start-to-finish drivel that was IVX (Oh, did I mention that I hated that story?). Sigh.

So they wanted to bring him back - which would be easy considering the whole dupe angle. This could have been a fun story with a lot of trademark Madrox humor.

But it just isn't. It's a convoluted time-travel mess (why, why, why?) that ends up damaging his character more than redeeming it in any way. It really feels like Rosenberg didn't read Madrox's earlier appearances at all... Kudos to him for throwing Layla Miller into the story (for all of a few panels) but wouldn't she play a heavy part in fixing this? Does she no longer "Know things"?

I could go on. But this one is a big mess. I don't recommend it to anyone, fan of Multiple Man or not.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does it all make sense in the end? No, not entirely. But it went in unexpected places and featured some characters that have been recently ignored. Is this the original Jaime? I guess not. But unlike other X-Men characters. This is one whose death can be easily faked and not seem like too much of a stretch. Written at the time that Rosenberg was the main X-writer. Would have been a little easier to follow if a synopsis was done of the way he died. I think he died during that crossover with the Inhumans. And I was told that really sucked, so I stayed away. You have to be selective as to which of this stuff you want to read, there's only so much time.

[Sesana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tries way too hard to be timey wimey. Instead, Rosenberg ends up with something so needlessly convoluted that Rosenberg feels like he has to overexplain it. There's also a character turn that just doesn't make any sense at all.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can handle a character that divides himself into multiple copies, and I can handle a little time travel, but as it turns out I can only barely handle the intersection of these two things.

It more or less did make sense in the end, and I was glad for it. The ending part, I mean.

[Sebastian Song · Rating 2 out of 5]

Multiple Man is a character with wonderful potential. Unfortunately, this tale fails to actualise any of them.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was trying waaayyyy too hard to be madcap and quirky with time travel. I love Layla Miller, and she was barely here as a throw away. I just... meh. I miss PAD writing X-Factor.

[Rory Wilding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any time I write about an X-Men comic book, I always begin with the assumption that it’s very hard to get new readers into the world of Marvel’s mutants, because there are so many titles ranging from the main series to spin-offs. There are a handful of comics that don’t have to rely on whatever continuity that the big titles are doing, including the five-issue miniseries focusing on Jamie Madrox AKA Multiple Man.

When one of Madrox's dupes is found locked in a bunker on Muir Island and brought to the X-Men, he is revealed to embody the treacherous aspects of the original Madrox and deliberately locked himself up for several years in order to find a way to become the new Jamie Prime, despite being inflicted with the disease known as M-Pox. Stealing a time machine from Bishop and goes into the future, Madrox messes with time, resulting in a Resistance that is mostly composed of his other dupes against another one who becomes the emperor of a totalitarian regime.

Although this is a standalone narrative that is more comical than your usual X-Men comic, a little bit of X-knowledge can you help you when reading this as from its opening pages showcases the New Mutants and classic characters like Beast and Bishop. Once we’re introduced to the other dopes who have their own superpowers that resemble other Marvel characters like the Hulk and Deadpool, Rosenberg preps us for a bonkers tale of a main character who is many entities, some of which are playing with time.

The subtitle of this comic is “It All Makes Sense in the End” and I not quite sure that it does. The problem with time travel is that it’s like magic where you can make up your own rules. As well as the fact that Rosenberg throws a lot of content into every issue, no matter how funny individual sequences are, aspects of the overall story involving time travel can go over your head.

With a story centring on a character who duplicate himself, resulting in versions, each with their own beverages, artist Andy MacDonald takes full advantage on this concept as he shows alternate takes of other characters within the Marvel universe. Along with Tamra Bonvillain’s bold colouring, MacDonald’s creative art is shown through designs via characters and environments, as well as using Multiple Man’s logo as a recurring visual motif. An additional note of praise would go towards the front covers drawn by Marcos Martin, whose quirky art-style are a masterclass in inventive graphic design and imagery that be both surreal and inventive.

The story itself can be a bit much, due to the time travel angle, but there are fun twists and turns, as well as a likeable but flawed mutant showing literally multiple sides of himself.

[Owen Townend · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really sure it all made sense to me in the end. Still this was a fun return to the X-Men comic universe for me.

Jamie Madrox, the titular Multiple Man, has piqued my curiosity for a long time. The idea of a self-replicating man whose 'dupes' get out of control sounds delightfully farcical but only now do I feel an urge to read about it. Rosenberg taps into the madcap world of Madrox with gleeful abandon. He clearly understands the character in all his facets. Madrox has a complex personality with many sides to it but every one is constantly ready with a quip.

I understand why Beast and the rest of the X-Men struggle to get on with the man. One knock to his head and the annoyance he creates doubles. He is like Deadpool though there is always more of him waiting to appear. MacDonald's art works overtime to make it feel like we're tripping up on dupes of the Multiple Man on almost every page. I'm not sure how he kept up with Rosenberg's time-bending plot but he did so admirably.

Without giving too much away, this is about saving the future of Jamie Madrox and also the future at large. It seems a man who could easily overpopulate the Earth on his own, eventually manages it and his more conscientious aspects must save the day. Of course, that is just what they do but, as I said at the start of this review, I'm not entirely sure I get how. This is obviously a comic book that bears repeat reads.

For the time being though I found Multiple Man: It All Makes Sense in the End a silly self-contained plot within the ever-busy Marvel Comic Universe. If you love a strange outlier superhero as much as I do, I recommend you read this at least twice.

[Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do you get when you mix an insane amount of dupes and time travel? You get an incredibly bonkers story that plays out like a love letter to convoluted time travel stories. This was a lot more campy than I expected, but after I settled in, I had a lot of fun. Pretty damn hilarious and self-aware, almost reads like a Deadpool comic, but with an army of Jamie Madroxes instead. If you just wanted more noir Jamie ala X-Factor, this is not it. Personally I welcome the change in tone. If you're looking for Jamie Prime, you won't find him here. This reads almost like a what if, given that most of the story occurs in alternate futures. If you love time travel stories, then this is essentially fanservice and I couldn't recommend it enough. Initially the art turned me off, but the more I read the more I realized how well suited Andy MacDonald's art is for this type of book. It seems a lot of people found this book confusing, but every single thing is explained by the last issue. It really does all make sense in the end.

9/10, with the caveat that it's absolutely not for everybody.

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It doesn’t really try to explain the time stream/alternate realities thing which is totally fine- it’s nearly impossible to comprehend as a group scientist, I read comic books for fun so I’d have no chance anyway! This is a fine story, silly enough, violent enough and full of characters. Another small piece of the X-men world.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know you're in trouble when the back cover text states, "It all makes sense when you read it - trust us." Uhhh no thank you?

Let's cut to the chase: It doesn't make sense. Multiple Man (Jamie Madrox) is found by the X-Men in a sealed chamber. He quickly time travels to the present (?) where he fights a future version of himself (??) at which point a bunch of alternate future versions of him show up (???) and they go off into yet another future to try to change the past so that a version of Multiple Man doesn't become a fascist emperor (????).

It seems intuitive (kinda) when you lay it out like that, but the book is far too convoluted and inside-jokey for any of the threads to tie together. I like some of Matthew Rosenberg's humor and Andy MacDonald's art is superb, but Multiple Man on the whole is a confusing dud.

[Pollo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Más enredado que pelea de pulpos. Aunque tiene sus momentos.

[Desperado]

Como una serie limitada de cinco números, Matthew Rosenberg ofrece una historia simple y sencilla en el que busca replicar la esencia de Jamie Madrox pero con el concepto de las líneas y saltos temporales de por medio como elemento diferenciador.

Resulta ser una aventura que sabe jugar muy bien con las líneas de tiempo y a medida que vas avanzando hasta llegar a cierto punto de inflexión, las piezas no terminan de encajar. Una vez superado, la historia coge otro color e incluso otro significado.

La historia únicamente se centra en el dilema que representa el poder de Madrox a una escala mucho mayor y de las repercusiones que causa. Por ello, debe buscar una solución a su propia maldición y terminar siendo algo completamente distinto a lo que ya era. No obstante, Matthew Rosenberg juega en todo momento con el lector como si se tratase de una peonza que siempre gira sobre su mismo eje.

El apartado gráfico me resulta idóneo con el tono de la historia y con el propio personaje, que es un aspecto inherente a la calidad de una obra. Andy McDonald narra visualmente toda la acción de la aventura con una perspectiva idónea para ese estilo de obra que tanto le gusta a Matthew Rosenberg.

En resumidas cuentas, es una historia divertida y amena que se lee en un periquete. No necesitas saber demasiado sobre Jamie Madrox o su papel en la franquicia mutante ya que es una historia autoconclusiva que se cierne únicamente sobre él.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know people are saying that this was confusing, and it certainly is. Time travel hijinks as a story plot is usually not good anyways, but then combined with the fact that most of the time travel is done by identical versions of the same but different character? It's impossible to keep up with what is happening.

But honestly, that was why this book was so fun. Beast summed that up the best in the first issue when he told two Madroxes "Stuff like this is why everyone finds you so annoying." Like, Beast just gave everyone a line that tells you you're not going to like this story because of how annoying and befuddling the concept of a time traveling Multiple Man will be. And yet it was done so well! And this was probably the funniest comic I've read in recent memory. I legit lol'ed many times while reading it.

And I think the point of the story is that none of it mattered! The story arc was was already 4/5 done by the fifth page of the first issue - we just didn't know it. It's also just a hilarious device to literally reuse a while page is dialogue from the second issue in the fifth issue. That's real meta level humor!

I loved this book, and I'm already looking forward to reading or again.

[Alex Sarll]

Rosenberg returns to the crazy caper mode of his early masterpiece 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank, but this time augmented by the possibilities for even greater silliness which are available once you factor in time travel, and a lead character, Jamie Madrox, who can replicate himself. And then fall out with the replicas thus created. As an exasperated Beast puts it, in a scene we see more than once from different perspectives, this is exactly why everyone finds Madrox so annoying. In a sense it's remarkable they find him at all, what with his having been killed off fairly recently, but hey, this is comics, it happens – and the explanation for why he's back is less blatantly bullshit than some. Does it, as the title promises, all make sense in the end? Yeah, more or less. It suffers from the fact that I'm also currently working my way through the definitive Madrox comics, Peter David's X-Factor, to which it can't really compare - but then it's probably for the best that it didn't even try, instead going for the laughs.

[Rob Marney · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a lot of references for people who used to read X-Men in the 90s, but is otherwise a convoluted time travel mess that retreads the familiar territory of "antihero grows up to become world conqueror, and we're back from the future to stop it". The story is put together just fine, but the artist has the impossible job of a limited series where every character is Jamie Madrox, and the intentionally confusing, "we'll explain the time paradox in the last issue" style does it no favors. The way of bringing Jamie back from the dead would have been a great two-page explanation, but as an entire series, it wears out its welcome fast.