Writing: Larry Hama
Art: Adam Kubert
What Went Down: Wolverine starts off the issue by stabbing Ozymandias and jumping into the abyss after Cyclops. Cyclops is busy shooting his optic blasts to slow his descent, but it’s not working, and he gets knocked unconscious by some debris. Jean fights a stone Magneto who has complete control over rock.
Wolverine catches Cyclops and stabs the wall to stop their descent. Scott wakes up and sees a carving of Professor X in the wall in front of him; he wonders out loud why Apocalypse would revere a carving of Xavier. Then Cyclops flashes back to the plane crash in his origin and passes out. Wolverine starts climbing the stone face.
Above, Iceman, Jean, and Cannonball are slowly being overwhelmed. Jean tells Iceman to extend a bridge, but the stone Wolverine attacks him. Some more stone statues are about to ambush the group, but Elektra knocks them off the ledge. The Magneto statue pins Jean, and flings some rock spikes at Wolverine, who shields Cyclops with his body. Scott responds by blowing the statue away with a laser blast. Ozymandias destroys the column in the center with all the carvings to preserve its secrets, so Iceman saves Wolverine and Cyclops.
Afterwards Wolverine acts savage, but Jean calms him down. Everyone agrees that it’s time to leave.
How It Was: I cannot see what the X-Offices were thinking at all with this one. How does giving your main character absurd proportions and reducing his mind so that he can only growl make for a better book? At one point he actually licks Cyclops’ face like a dog! Frankly this story is stupid for so many reasons, the main one being Wolverine’s transformation. The second reason is that I can’t really tell why Ozymandias is fighting the X-Men, other than the fact that he’s a bad guy and they’re good guys.
So it’s just an issue of the X-Men fighting stone statues for no reason. Kubert competently renders the action, but there’s no real investment in any of it. Elektra’s role in this story is so minor that she might as well not be in it, and as I said before, Wolverine is not compelling now that he has the brain of an animal with no personality. And the reveal of Professor X’s depiction in Apocalypse’s temple feels significant here, but is never mentioned again, so it’s hard to get excited by it.
Overall, I do not have a lot to say about this issue. It’s dull, boring, and disappointing overall.
F
No comments:
Post a Comment