By: Simon Spurrier (writer), Paul Davidson & Francis Portela (art), Chris Sotomayor (colors) & Rob Steen (letters)
The Story: The X-Club gets a taste of a nasty future where Hope wasn’t quite the savior of mutants.
What’s Good: I really enjoy Dr. Nemesis, so it was good to see the X-editors give the X-Men’s science team (the X-Club) a chance to shine in this one-shot tie-in to Second Coming. This issue picks up right after the events in Second Coming where the X-Club is investigating a strange oilrig kind of apparatus that Bastion had created. When we last saw them, it looked like they were going to get blown up, but instead they seem to get whisked off into a possible future.
And what a future it is. I won’t spoil the set-up, but let’s just say that in this future, Hope wasn’t quite the savior that Scott Summers had hoped. Of course, this future is bleak as hell. Is there any other kind of future that is featured in an X-book? However, as routine as the “bleak future” is in X-books, this has a pretty neat set-up.
One of the other things that I enjoyed about this issue is that it brought back the mutant “cure” that Dr. Kavita Rao developed during the first story arc of Astonishing X-Men. What is more, the cure get’s used in a very interesting way.
What’s Not So Good: As excited as I was to see Dr. Nemesis get some real face time, I thought the characterization was way off. Nemesis is a smart ass, but I don’t think he’s the quite the font of one-liners that we see here. Granted, some of them are funny (calling Dr. Rao “no-powers-girl” since she isn’t a mutant), but there are just a few too many of them. Nemesis is also written such that he is always yelling and swearing. I don’t remember that before. And the art isn’t helping where he is drawn to accentuate the yelling. I was really disappointed: we finally get an issue focused on Nemesis and this is what we get?
The other complaint I have with this issue is that it doesn’t add anything to Second Coming. I certainly don’t like it when event tie-ins are required, but I do feel that they should add something to the story. By the end of this story, the X-Club is in no different position than they would have been had the events of this issue not happened. It almost could have all been a dream.
Conclusion: This tie-in doesn’t add anything to Second Coming and misses the characterization of one of its main characters.
Grade: C-
– Dean Stell