100 Posts!!!!!! Wooooooooooo!!

It's a very exciting week for me since it's my centennial.  On top of that, I've been able to maintain a consistent weekly posting for the last four months, so go me.  Big thank you to the few and proud who have been visiting and reading.  I'm also pretty excited for the next hundred posts, which should cover the Age of the Apocalypse, the Phalanx, and the road to Onslaught.  Also, one of these days I swear I will write about something other than X-Men reviews.  But for now, I'll keep enjoying the writing while you keep enjoying the reading.  Excelsior and all that.

X-Men #32

X-Men #32
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: Spiral tells Warren and Betsy that she wants to help Psylocke seek the truth. Because this is a comic book, and they’re enemies, of course they have to have a fight. Nothing Spiral says is particularly helpful, and then the rest of the blue team randomly shows up to finish her off. Spiral teleports away, and Betsy shows the torn out bionic eyes to the rest of the X-Men.

Hours later, Banshee and Beast are doing things to the eyes with tools. They are able to find recordings from right after Psylocke disappeared into the Siege Perilous. Basically the actual story goes that Matsuo and Mandarin wanted to just switch the two girls’ bodies, but because Spiral is twisted and bitter, she manipulated their minds so that they turned out mixed up. If you were wondering why Revanche thought she was the real Betsy, it turns out that she was not used to telepathic powers, and her emotions confused herself, Psylocke, and the rest of the X-Men, hence the initial story.

Outside Gambit asks Professor X to talk about the problems he’s been having with Rogue. Also, if you care, Beast has outlawed smoking in the mansion. As for Psylocke, she once again journeys to Nyorin’s estate in Japan, this time alone. However, Nyorin is dead, killed by Matsuo. Matsuo’s reasoning is that Nyorin created a fake diary to keep them apart because Nyorin was also in love with Kwannon.

Using a kiss, Matsuo gives Psylocke the stored memories Kwannon had of Betsy Braddock’s; he also removes all of Kwannon’s stored personality traits. Despite this, Betsy is still able to utilize her ninja skills. After this, Matsuo wants to kill himself, but Psylocke convinces him not to in order to preserve Kwannon’s memory. Both characters bury Kwannon, and when Betsy returns she throws the bionic eyes into the water. Archangel shows up, and the two comment about how they’ve both been manipulated by evil forces and come out stronger for it.

How It Was: Well just like this cover and the last one alluded to, Psylocke fights Spiral…for all of five pages. Then the X-Men show up and beat her soundly in another three. This makes for a rather unfulfilling action sequence, on top of the fact that Spiral doesn’t really explain her reasoning for messing with Psylocke and Revanche. The explanation seems to be “because I’m crazy” but I’m sure most people were hoping for a little more.

After that, the sequence with Matsuo and Psylocke turns out to be pretty good. Again, we’re talking about a relationship that Nicieza never built up, and basically jammed into the plot so the story would work. But all in all, the idea of Psylocke convincing Matsuo to overcome his grief to honor Kwannon’s memory is a pretty nice idea. Having Psylocke’s memories returned to her via a plot convenient power transfer kiss is not. And with that contrived kiss, all memory of Revanche is essentially wiped away from the X-Men titles.

Andy Kubert does a great job with the art. The snowy backgrounds look really nice and everyone has a nice sense of action and movement. Plus, Psylocke actually wears clothes in the winter weather, a nice departure from the adventures in X-Men #17-19. While not a very exciting story, Nicieza does manage to get a little dramatic and emotional mileage out of a concept that most thought was completely dead in the water.

C+

X-Men #31

X-Men #31
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: Ahh, the final Revanche story. It just rolls right off the tongue. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can be done talking about this horrible character. X-Men #31 opens on a flashback of Kwannon jumping around the rooftops of a flashy city, presumably Tokyo. Matsuo Tsuryaba catches her and we find out that the two were lovers and that his nickname for her was Butterfly. At the bottom of the flashback panels, we see the silhouette of Spiral commenting about them. She switches to a live feed of the eye cameras that were placed in the original Betsy Braddock to find that Revanche is standing over a sleeping Professor X with a sword. Then the feed cuts out.

When Professor X wakes up, he finds a note and Revanche’s sword, and gives them to Psylocke. Psylocke worries about how she will resolve her identity issues without Revanche. After Xavier leaves, Psylocke pulls out her parting gift from Revanche…the original Betsy Braddock’s bionic eyes.

Matsuo reflects on a flashback of Kwannon and himself; he took a picture of her and she became angry with him. We learn that Kwannon worked for Lord Nyorin and Matsuo worked for the Hand, and it looks like both sides were about to come into conflict. Matsuo (in the flashback) suggests they should kill each other, as opposed to being forced to fight each other later. Of course they can’t, because it wouldn’t be honorable. Spiral sneaks up on Matsuo in the present and eats an apple while they discuss how Spiral repaired Kwannon’s body.

At the mansion, Psylocke partakes in a lethal Danger Room sequence. Archangel programs a hologram of his Angel form to surprise her. Warren offers to go out to eat with her and discuss her problems. In the study, Xavier asks Beast to take over leadership of the blue team as well as the daily tasks of maintaining the institute. We also find out that Emma Frost has deeded her Massachusetts Academy to Xavier. Beast acquiesces. Gambit and Rogue’s relationship is showing tension since the Gambit mini-series. I’ve only read the first issue, but it appears that somehow Rogue absorbed the memories of Gambit’s wife Bella Donna, because she keeps saying things that Gambit remembers his ex-wife saying.

Next we get the flashback of Matsuo and Kwannon being forced to fight each other. Matsuo ends up throwing Kwannon off of a cliff, where she “dies.” After retrieving her body, Matsuo takes her to the Hand, but they can’t heal her because she suffered brain damage from being underwater. In the middle of the flashback, present day Revanche attacks Matsuo.

In Salem Center, Betsy shows Warren the eyes that Revanche pulled out of her own sockets. Back in Japan, Matsuo can’t help viewing Revanche as Kwannon with his “mind’s eye,” whatever that means. Matsuo admits his part in getting the Mandarin and Spiral to preserve her body, since Kwannon’s mind was gone. Revanche points out the irony because the body that was supposed to save her is now infected with the Legacy Virus.

Revanche asks Matsuo to kill her so she won’t have to die from the Legacy Virus. He does, and back in America Psylocke feels the shockwave, causing her to crash the car. The final page leaves us with Spiral popping in, saying that she wants to help Psylocke discover the answers to her questions about her identity.

How It Was: Surprisingly this story turned out more enjoyable than I thought it would. It’s far from perfect, but the sheer fact that it’s the conclusion to the go-nowhere Revanche storyline, and it keeps my interest, says a lot about it. As you can probably tell by my synopsis above, this book is dense with information. There is an incredible amount of exposition, which is needed to tie up the incredible amount of loose ends that span from Mojoworld to the Hand. Plus there is the problem that to make this story work, Nicieza has to retcon his previous story by saying that all of the information Nyorin gave them previously was a lie. While this somewhat negates the impact of the first story, it does leave Nicieza open to write a satisfactory, if melodramatic, tragic romance for Kwannon and Matsuo.

Since it is her death issue, Revanche gets the majority of the focus of this issue, and hence gets to do all of the interesting things. Between ripping out her own eyes and asking Matsuo to take her life, Revanche actually develops a pretty compelling personality. Of course it is all based around that wacky comics’ portrayal of honor, but it’s still a lot better than what came before. Psylocke surprisingly doesn’t do much of anything except for a generic Danger Room exercise and a continuing of her burgeoning relationship with Archangel, meaning her scenes are rather dull.

Really, the main problem is that you can almost hear the plot struggling to contain all of the various retcons. No, Kwannon wasn’t in love with Nyorin, it was Matsuo; really, all of the X-Men knew Betsy was the real Psylocke, it was just Revanche’s emotions affecting her powers, to the point where she fooled Professor X and Jean Grey; Kwannon’s brain was actually damaged, so not a lot of her made it into the pair. It all just reeks of plot convenience, but if you can overlook it all, there is a fairly decent resolution here to a rather awful ongoing sub plot.

C+

Uncanny X-Men #314

Uncanny X-Men #314
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Lee Weeks

What Went Down: With only about a day spent in Bobby Drake’s body, Emma Frost has already learned to use his powers more effectively than he has over the course of several years. She starts out by escaping the X-Men by flying away. Storm and Archangel chase her, but she is determined to be reunited with her students, the Hellions. Despite being told that they are dead, Emma refuses to believe them, dives into the water, and freezes the entire river. This act also transports her three miles in five seconds. Banshee and Xavier are in the Blackbird, and Charles knows exactly where Frost is going.

In the Danger Room, Bishop is fighting a robot without using his powers while somebody taunts him off panel. Bishop finishes off the robot, and it is revealed that the person talking to him is a hologram of his dead sister, Shard. Jubilee interrupts the session, and Bishop explains who Shard is to her. When asked how she died, Bishop tells Jubilee that he killed her, although this later turns out to be an exaggeration, as really Bishop only blames himself for her death.

Emma returns to Frost Enterprises, but finds that she cannot turn her body back to human form. Some security guards try to stop her, but they are unable to. Emma then melts herself and slides into the building.

Once in her office, Frost uses her computer to try to find the Hellions; as she does this, she reminisces about how she used her powers in her past to accrue her wealth. The computer shows her that all of the Hellions are dead, except for Empath, and then shows her how they died. More security guards flood the office, but Emma is so heartbroken that she asks them to kill her. Xavier makes it just in time to stop the guards with his powers. Emma vents her frustrations, claiming that Xavier’s way was the right way since his students, the New Mutants, survived. She views the Hellions deaths as her failure. Banshee offers Emma a chance to come with them, which she takes. As they leave, Xavier looks at the screen and announces that never again will the blood of innocents be spilt in the conflict between mutants and humans, which seems like a pretty unrealistic goal.

How It Was: Well it’s only the third issue into his run as artist and Joe Mad already needs a fill in artist. This is a sign of things to come. Weeks’ work is about as far from Joe Mad as you can get; the characters have a much more realistic look to them, and everything looks more like your standard Marvel House Style, only colored a little darker. The opening spread is really awesome, except it’s hard to tell if the lines at the top of the page are rain or wind or something else.

As for the story, it’s fairly predictable, but still really well done. The part that makes the issue is Emma’s guilt and frustration over the deaths of her students. Perhaps Lobdell purposely underplayed the X-Men’s reactions to the Hellions’ deaths just to make this issue seem even more impressive…naah. The deaths of her students also make for a perfectly logical reason for Emma to reform and become a hero, something that has led to some really great stories down the line. The ending is kind of ruined by Xavier’s overly melodramatic and unrealistic statement, but otherwise this is a pretty good character piece for Emma. Unfortunately, we never get to see Iceman’s perspective in Emma’s body, and the two are switched back by the time we see them next. And I would love to know how Iceman can just fly through the air. Also the other problem is that the next couple of months feature Iceman whining about how much he is loser because he can’t control his powers as well.

B