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+

Astonishing X-Men #2

Astonishing X-Men #2
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: This issue starts out with the X-Men already in Chicago, trying to direct a mob of terrorized humans to safety; the people are terrified by the sight of Apocalypse’s probes coming to calculate the potential body count. Sunfire becomes angry and attacks the probes, causing more panic. Rogue absorbs his power to get him to calm down, but in the process she absorbs his memories of seeing Apocalypse defeating Sunfire and wiping out everyone in Japan. Sunfire is ashamed, but Rogue comforts him.

Back in Westchester County, Magneto is having a tender moment watching his son Charles sleep. Bishop comes in and insists that Charles isn’t supposed to exist, but Magneto explains that to a father it doesn’t matter. In Manhattan, Apocalypse is throwing a hissy fit because his minions haven’t detected the X-Men’s base yet. Rex gets the call with the location and Apocalypse is appeased.

In Chicago, Sabretooth tells Blink that he is going to stall Holocaust while the other X-Men evacuate the city; he also tells Blink to avenge him, since this is most likely a suicide mission. Rogue tries to stop Creed, but Blink uses her powers to knock Rogue unconscious and teleport Creed to Holocaust’s location.

Sabretooth confronts Holocaust, learns the location of his Infinite factory, and sends Wild Child to go tell the others. A fight arises with Sabretooth tearing off Holocaust’s helmet, but inevitably still failing.

How It Was: As I noted before, Astonishing X-Men’s strength is its strong personalities for its characters. Lobdell takes his cast of five and uses each issue to focus on what really drives each X-Man. Here we get an excellent flashback with Sunfire: dressed in his old uniform, surrounded by piles of corpses, and being held down by Apocalypse in a lake of the blood of innocents. In four panels, Lobdell is able to justify all of Sunfire’s erratic, impulsive, and angry attitude quirks and at the same time make us feel sympathetic for a very unlikable character.

All of the characters are equally interesting, although Sabretooth is kind of acting as a second-rate Wolverine; I say this because his relationship with Blink strongly echoes the Wolverine/Kitty or Wolverine/Jubilee dynamic. And I’m not quite sure how Blink knows where Holocaust is, and if she knows where he is, why don’t all of the X-Men just go and beat him right now? I guess we would miss out on a pretty awesome fight with Holocaust.

And while I’m on the subject, I feel like Holocaust is a wildly inappropriate name for a super villain. Yes, it’s a nitpick and I know that the word refers to any mass genocide and not a specific one, but the seriousness of the name doesn’t really fit with this basically one-dimensional villain. Marvel apparently agreed with me, because years later characters started calling him Nemesis again.

Still this is a fun book with actual overwhelming odds for the protagonists to overcome. Awesome efforts on writing and art make this really enjoyable.

A

X-Men #37

X-Men #37
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: The next generation of mutants start out this issue with Clarice getting captured by Harvest and the Phalanx. Clarice uses her power to escape, and Monet punches the crap out of the bad guys. Too bad for our heroes that the bad guys just reform afterwards.

In the water below the boat, Banshee and Everett climb up the anchor chain to rescue the children. Inside the boat, Emma and Jubilee have somehow found their way inside, where they fight Phalanx infected rats and discuss Jubilee’s fears about her powers.

When all seems lost for the young mutants, they are saved in the nick of time by …Sabretooth? Yes Sabretooth takes the time to track down the Phalanx base and help rescue the children. Banshee and Everett join in, and together they annihilate Harvest for the second time.

Sabretooth refuses to explain how or why he came back to save the children. The heroes discuss how best to help Paige, who has been infected by the Phalanx, when Sabretooth takes it upon himself to tear her skin off. Luckily, her mutant power turns out to be the ability to shed her top layer of skin to reveal a different material, in this case metal skin. Harvest then returns for a third time to try to kill everyone.

As Emma tries to escape with the kids, they discover the bodies of some people and a dog absorbed by the Phalanx. This inspires Clarice to stop running and stand up to Harvest. Using her powers she tears Harvest apart, but for some reason she gets caught in the effect herself. So Clarice dies and the X-Men’s victory comes at the tragic cost of a character that was two issues old.

How It Was: Nicieza sets up a climactic battle to end the crossover, and it succeeds in feeling like a final, brutal story ending fight. The problem is that the final baddie is too powerful, and it makes for an uneven final chapter. The Phalanx, and Harvest in particular, are all shallow characters with little motivation or personality. They’re supposed to be unbeatable, which is good for setting up adversity for the heroes, but they’re so unbeatable that the fight doesn’t make sense. There is a difference between creating a novel challenge for the heroes and having the bad guy come back over and over again with no logic or reason behind it. And why does Clarice have to die to defeat the bad guy?  Why can't she use her powers like she did in part 3?

The reason of course is because the writer wants to get a cheap emotional ending without having really earned it; Clarice wasn’t really developed enough to care about, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming very popular. This is mostly due to her return in Age of Apocalypse, which occurred four months after this book came out. It’s a much more successful take on the character whose only real purpose was to make the end of this story kind of sad.

Sabretooth’s return makes for an intriguing mystery of his allegiance. Unfortunately it is later forgotten, and Creed just says he was only pretending to be good even though there was no real reason behind it. The reveal of Paige’s power is well done, though.

This is an underwhelming conclusion with awful villains and some under-developed new characters. Plus there isn’t really any resolution at all to the question of where the X-Men have been taken to (that occurs in Wolverine and Cable of all places). It’s an epic finale, just not a very good epic finale.

C-

Uncanny X-Men #317

Uncanny X-Men #317
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: Paige Guthrie wakes up to find herself a prisoner of the Phalanx, along with four other mutants: Monet, Clarice, Angelo, and Gregor. Angelo’s really negative and stretchy, Clarice cries a lot, Gregor is kind of hokey, and Monet just sits there. Paige is certain that the X-Men will come to rescue them all. Clarice points out that Paige has been infected with some kind of trans-mode virus, even though it appears on the outside of her clothes.

In San Francisco, Emma, Banshee, Jubilee, and Everett arrive at one of Emma’s luxurious town homes. Banshee lets Emma know that he doesn’t trust her and then destroys a number of targeting devices outside the house. Inside the absurdly large living area, Emma shows Banshee their next objective: a SHIELD safehouse in the San Francisco area.

Back in the Phalanx prison, Angelo tries to cheer Paige up. A member of the Phalanx named Harvest visits the captives and threatens all of them. Clarice uses her powers of teleportation to start to pull Harvest apart, but Gregor stops her because he is worried that she might be hurt. Harvest teleports away.

On what appears to be the Golden Gate Bridge, Jubilee talks with Everett about how worthless she feels for not being more adept with her powers, especially after Everett used them so effectively last issue. She is also fed up with all of the suffering that comes with the role of X-Man, even though she loves everyone on the team.

At the SHIELD base, Emma uses her powers to hide them from sight, while Banshee uses his powers to… errr hide them from the cameras somehow. In the prison, Monet takes the time to actually talk. She explains that she has manipulated her clothes, which are techno organic, into a weapon that can hide them from detection. She also kills Gregor because he was really a Phalanx spy.

Emma and Banshee find a techno organic reading using the SHIELD computers, but the agents discover them because Emma’s powers didn’t hide the rain puddles they brought in with them. Emma threatens the agents, but Banshee knocks them out first. Emma claims she was bluffing.

Monet uses her super strength to bust a hole in the prison and escape. Paige suggests that she should stay behind because she is infected, but Monet forces her to come with them. The group discovers that they are in the middle of the ocean on a giant boat.

How It Was: Alright then. We finally get a little bit of personality from the next generation of mutants. Angelo, the future Skin, is a pessimistic bastard. While most hideous characters like Beast or the Thing keep they’re regrets and sadness to themselves, Angelo is immature and allows it to taint his attitude and interactions; it actually comes off as fresh in a world of stoic comic book heroes, but it’s not necessarily fun to read. The rest of the characters aren’t nearly as interesting, but that’s okay because Lobdell ideally wants to save that development for the main Generation X series. The reveal of Gregor as a spy is well handled, although once again a little predictable due to his odd behavior.

Jubilee probably gets the most development in the brief scenes she appears in. Selling audiences on Jubilee wanting to leave the X-Men wasn’t an easy mandate, but I think Lobdell makes a compelling argument here. It is strange that the two characters go all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge to have their conversation, but oh well; meanwhile, Everett continues to be quiet and boring.

The plotline with Emma and Sean infiltrating SHIELD seems like a needless detour to pad out the story. If Emma has enough technology to find a top secret facility, why can’t she find the Phalanx ship as well? Shouldn’t they tell SHIELD about the Phalanx? And can’t Banshee just ask for their help, since they’re obviously aware of who is?

The art is pretty good, but for some reason Joe Mad has made Everett and Gregor’s bodies really over muscled. Everett’s girth might be a side effect of absorbing Sabretooth’s powers, but it still looks really weird. The layout of Emma’s home and the effects of Clarice’s powers on Harvest serve as stand out moments for the art. The spotlight on the young mutants isn’t great, and it leads to some stalling on the part of the heroes outside.

C+