By: Mike Carey (writer), Steve Kurth (pencils), Allen Martinez (inks), Brian Reber (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Daniel Ketchum (editor)
The Story: Age of X comes to a close. Will there be any wrinkles beyond “it was all in Legion’s mind”?
What’s Good: If I’m being cheeky, I’d say the best thing about this is that Age of X is now over and we can move on to some new X-Men stories. That’s a mean thing to say because a lot of people worked very hard on this crossover, but it’s true.
Another nugget to take from Age of X is that it brings Legion front and center again. If cover art is to be trusted, X-Men Legacy is going to have some focus on Legion in upcoming story arcs and it’s likely that a lot of current X-readers aren’t that familiar with Charles Xavier’s mentally unstable son. If nothing else, by the end of this Age of X story, all readers would say that Legion is (a) crazy and (b) very powerful.
The final nice bit of this story was seeing the X-Men after the regain their proper memories at the end of the story, but before the Age of X thoughts have completely faded. So, we see Frenzy and Cyclops share a passionate kiss…as Emma looks on…. and we see Storm and Namor give each other a meaningful glance since they were apparently a couple in Age of X (although nothing was done with their relationship).
What’s Not So Good: Unless you are one of the 5 fans of Legion out there, this was just a lousy story because, in the end…. everything that happened was all in Legion’s brain as one of his multiple personalities created the entire Age of X universe merely to give Legion a nice place to live. That’s it. Not only was the main story not very interesting, but it made the tie-in stories useless. I read Age of X Universe #2 shortly after this and was really irritated. Not only was Age of X Universe not very good, it was made completely irrelevant by the revelation of everything happening in Legion’s mind. Those aren’t really alternate Avengers we’re seeing…they were more like a bad dream about alternate Avengers that the X-Men had. And, some things about the story don’t even make any sense. For example, I can understand Xavier being involved in the struggle we see on the page with Legion’s alternate personalities because Xavier is a telepath. But, if the other X-Men like Kitty Pryde and Magneto are just flopped on the floor, where are their psyches when they are fighting with Legion? Is Legion pulling all of the psyches into his own mind and then letting them run loose? Why do that? Why wouldn’t Legion’s brain just created a nice happy place for him and leave everyone else alone? I’m sure it had something to do with Nemesis messing with Legion’s brain, but it still doesn’t make a ton of sense.
There were also a lot of cool plot threads that got completely dropped as Age of X progressed. Seeing Cannonball as the leader of the X-Men was kinda cool, but not much happened with it. Rogue’s story was irrelevant in this final issue. There were a lot of romantic relationships (Storm/Namor) that never went anywhere. How about the murderously effective New Mutants? What about the Wolverine/Cyclops plan to get to the bottom of the mystery? And Did Gambit even have a line in this final issue?
I feel as if I’ve already said enough ugly things about the Kurth/Martinez/Reber art team in past reviews. I’m not into piling on, but although the basic storytelling is acceptable this isn’t very nice art mostly because the characters look so stiff and posed. And, I don’t think this highly rendered coloring style is doing the linework any favors because in many panels, the highlights indicate light sources that are in direct conflict with the inked shading.
Conclusion: A pretty lousy crossover comes to an end. If you are a huge fan of Legion, you’ll be happy because this restores him to prominence in the X-universe. But otherwise, this isn’t a very compelling end to a mystery that started off pretty strong.
Grade: D
-Dean Stell
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