By: Victor Gischler (writer), Paco Medina (pencils), Juan Vlasco (inks), Marte Gracia (colors), Joe Caramanga (letters) & Jake Thomas (editor)
The Story: It’s time for the mutant – vampire, battle-royale, loser-leaves-town, cage-match.
What’s Good: X-Men kicking vampire ass. Did you have any doubts about how this would turn out? This comic mostly consists of one big battle that features action on Utopia, in the skies above and the seas below. It is the equivalent of a summer action movie. Sure, it doesn’t feature much character development, but these are the X-Men we’re talking about. We pretty much know these characters by now, so sometimes it is nice to see a creator just let them fight with stuff. Especially when they are fighting with something that is already dead, so we don’t have to worry about violating any “Superhero Rules” about killin’.
In fact, the best thing about this comic is that it is a zero angst zone, but it also gives the X-Men chances to shine: Cyclops gets to command and be all tactical, Angel gets to be all Archangely, Wolverine gets to chop stuff up, Iceman gets to be religious, Emma gets to be diamond and unbiteable, etc.
The art is mostly strong. It does have shaky faces here and there, but Medina is also doing a LOT of crowded panels that have 10+ characters in them. That’s a lot of work and his level of detail is to be commended.
What’s Not So Good: Not a big fan of the plot device they used to solve Wolverine’s vampirism. The whole thing was just too convenient and mostly makes X-Men #4 irrelevant beyond it being cliff-hanger for the sake of cliff-hanging. I hate to be cynical, but it stinks a little bit of making sure the story was 6 issues long to make it convenient to print in a trade paperback. That’s just annoying. I’m also a little unclear on what will happen next month. This story is at a very good stopping point, but it seems that we have more story in this arc? Perhaps it will be a great surprise and I’ll love it, but I’m dubious. I’ll still buy the issue, of course, but I’m dubious.
And does Wolverine have to be central in every X-Men story. Just asking because I kinda like some of the other mutants and he has his own books.
Conclusion: Complaints aside, this issue is a lot of fun. It’s been a few years since we got to see the X-Men lay down an organized butt-kicking. They’ve had skirmishes with groups, or small groups of mutants getting into fights, but nothing on this scale since the Messiah CompleX storyline.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion