Weekly Comic Book Review

Christos N. Gage (writer), Andrea Divito (pencils), Nathan Fairbairn (colors), Dave Sharpe (letters), Mike Perkins (cover)

The Story: Magneto’s campaign for mutant rights continues. After liberating Genosha and making it a safe nation for all Mutantkind, Xavier urges Magnus to seek less violent ways to progress the cause. Even with the support of Black Bolt, Black Panther, and Namor, Magneto’s patience wears thin with diplomacy. Behind Xavier’s back, he starts to move the pieces into position for full scale war, while the US sends a strike team to assassinate him.

What’s Good: Gage does a good job of dealing with the Magneto-Xavier relationship. As Magneto nudges things closer to war, Xavier’s opposing views take a front-seat which provides some great tension between the two. It’s also nice to see Magneto’s attempts at diplomacy. He’s such a strong character, and to see him do something “weak” like seeking the support of others is a pretty compelling power-shift to see. This ties back into his relationship with Xavier as things always cut back to Magneto telling Charles how he really feels about groveling.

What’s Not So Good: There’s a lot of exposition and setup. That in itself isn’t a problem, but since the first two issues were so war-heavy, the drag of the setup is more noticeable. Still the overload of information takes a toll on all aspects of the book. Andrea Divito has a great visual pallet for battle scenes, but since there’s a lot of talk here, she doesn’t get as much of a chance to shine. Nothing looks bad, in fact the pencils are still outstanding. However, I’m looking forward to seeing the massive battles which are no doubt on their way.

Conclusion: It’s a slow week for this title, but a necessary one. Things are set up nicely for a dramatic conclusion to Magneto’s rise to power. I wish this information had been spread out better over all three issues, but as it stands now we’re ready for war.

Grade: B

- Ben Berger