By: Mike Carey (writer), Harvey Tolibao (pencils), Sandu Florea (inks), Brian Reber (colors), Cory Petit (letters) & Daniel Ketchum (editor)
The Story: Mutants are disappearing on Utopia and it’s up to Rogue and Blindfold to figure out what’s going on.
What’s Good: I always appreciate how contained X-Men Legacy seems. Whereas the other X-titles are kinda making a continuity fruit salad of things, Legacy is just staying out of the way and telling competent stories featuring Rogue for the most part. Even though I have a some issues that I’ll get into below, I appreciate that Mike Carey never uses Wolverine as a kind of deux ex machina to fix the problem. So, even though “it” doesn’t totally work in this issue, Carey deserves a tip of the cap for telling an X-story that is self-contained and uses a minimum of characters.
And, the story has some rewards for those of have been reading this series. About a year ago in publication terms, Utopia was besieged by Emplate and it seems that that creepy baddie may have left a few dimensional backdoors open after that situation was seemingly resolved. It’s always nice to see some ongoing continuity in a series instead of the practice of never referencing a previous story for fear of offending a future reader of a trade paperback.
What’s Not So Good: Ugh! A few things… By the end of this issue, we can see the set-up for the Age of X that Marvel has been teasing the hell out of. I am actually really looking forward to that story, but I have to wonder why this issue’s story was necessary. Let’s just get onto the main course! As I mentioned above, Legacy does a GREAT job of staying out of the way of the other X-titles and from what I understand, Age of X shouldn’t cause continuity problems itself, so why not just go ahead and let us enjoy that story?
Given that we did have this story, why is the fairly serious problem of several missing mutants (among them a few real powerhouses like Armor and Magma) being investigated by Blindfold, Rogue and Madison Jeffries? What is that trio going to do if things turn ugly because they have no firepower and no one for Rogue to absorb combat powers from. Wouldn’t Cyclops be a little more paranoid given that in the last year Utopia has been attacked by Bastion (in Second Coming), 5 or so Predator X’s (in Uncanny), hordes of Vampires (in X-Men), undead mutants (in Necrosha) and Emplate himself? You’d think that there would a be an attack squad of heavy hitters ready to go on a moment’s notice for these sorts of situations.
And, the art really didn’t work for me. Tolibao’s layouts do a good job of telling the story, but the faces all look a little weird. I just have a hard time enjoying a comic if the faces look odd to me because I need the characters to act a little bit. And there are entirely too many glistening highlights. Rogue has breasts that are throwing off sparkles like diamonds (not her costume either, I’m talking the actual skin on her breasts).
Conclusion: Not very good. It pains me to say that because Mike Carey has been telling really good stories in Legacy over the last ~4 years. Enough so that I kinda wish they would let him “drive the mutant bus” for a while now that Fraction is leaving Uncanny. But, this wasn’t a great issue due to some story problems and art that I didn’t enjoy. Still looking forward to Age of X though.
Grade: D
-Dean Stell