Astonishing X-Men #4

Astonishing X-Men #4
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: We’re treated to a gorgeous one page spread of Blink angrily calling out Holocaust. Of course Holocaust underestimates the youth, and a fight begins that ends with Blink dropping the villain in a vat of chemicals. Meanwhile, the rest of the X-Men are still fighting Infinites.

Elsewhere, Magneto has been captured by Apocalypse (which happens in Amazing X-Men). Apocalypse taunts Magneto and threatens his loved ones. At the plant, prisoners scheduled for processing are about to be executed. Sunfire saves them all and frees them.

Holocaust survives the acid and attacks Morph and Blink, but together with the other X-Men they beat him. Holocaust tells Rogue that Apocalypse has captured Magneto and Bishop before teleporting away. Iceman shows up to stop Rogue from following Holocaust, and Sabretooth also shows up after healing from his wounds. Rogue ends the issue by swearing that they will save Magneto and Charles as well as end the Age of Apocalypse.

How It Was: Action, action, and more action. If you can’t tell by the brief description above, most of this issue is fighting. And really, isn’t that what the grand finale of a story should be. The seemingly docile Blink gets to shine with a little aggressiveness as well as some creative uses for her teleporting powers. Plus the Infinites make for excellent cannon fodder. And the fight at the end with Holocaust is awesome, except for Holocaust’s anti-climactic escape at the end.

Even with all of the action, Lobdell doesn’t let up with the cool character moments. Morph and Rogue share a great scene together when Morph thinks she’s dead, and Sunfire gets to sort of redeem himself by saving a large group of people. So many writers don’t understand that to make a good team book, every character has to shine, but Lobdell has this concept nailed.

Overall this was a fantastic series. It is a little weak how Sabretooth just pops up on the last two pages after his death was made into such a big deal. But as I’ve said before, his personality was probably the weakest (i.e. Wolverine wannabe), and his death served the purpose of placing more focus on the other characters. Still, there’s no real reason to bring him back since he doesn’t serve that big of a purpose in the finale. While this series doesn’t have a lot to do directly with Apocalypse, it is still a really well done series that does justice to all of the characters and the setting.

A

Astonishing X-Men #3

Astonishing X-Men #3
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: We open on the Infinites chasing after the feral Wild Child and trying to stop him from bringing intel to the rest of the X-Men. Wild Child is shot, but Morph and Sunfire save him. Then Wild Child touches Rogue, allowing her to see his memories and learn where the factory is.

Sabretooth wakes up and finds that he is a prisoner of Holocaust. The villain brags about how nothing can stop Apocalypse etcetera etcetera, followed by cutting Sabretooth’s throat. We then see a flashback of Wolverine and Sabretooth rescuing a young Blink from a burning building. Morph tries to lighten the mood, but Sunfire gets mad at him.

At the Xavier Estate, Magneto is testing Bishop, asking if Bishop would kill him to save all of humanity. Nanny, Magneto’s robot nanny in charge of his son, sounds an alert and takes Charles through an emergency exit. In the processing plant, Morph turns into a whale and transports all of the X-Men inside. A lot of fighting ensues, ending with Blink discovering the dead body of Sabretooth.

How It Was: This book is great; it has some straight up awesome scenes. One of the best is Morph rescuing Wild Child disguised as Holocaust with a top hat and cane, directly followed by a grim and stoic Sunfire incinerating all of the bad guys. It’s such a great juxtaposition of emotion and tone; I love it. Morph actually has a number of great scenes; the creators have a lot of fun turning him into a door, a brick wall, and even a talking whale. His one-liners and silly forms offer a great counter to more serious scenes like the “death” of Sabretooth.

Speaking of the death, while it’s impact is limited by the end of this series I really like how Sabretooth’s death scene is immediately followed by a flashback to him rescuing Blink after the turn of the page. This does a great job of setting up Blink’s behaviors next issue as well as sheds some light on her beginnings. The art continues to be phenomenal, with Joe Mad conveying both excitement and emotion quite well. My only issue with the issue is that the plot doesn’t move very far as we go from learning about the factory to initially arriving there. But it’s a small price to pray for all of the great character goodness in this issue.

B+