By: Victor Gischler (writer), Chris Bachalo & Paco Medina (pencils), Tim Townsend, Wayne Faucher, Jaime Mendoza, Al Vey & Juan Vlasco (inks), Antonio Fabela & Jim Charalampidis (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: The X-Men / Spider-Man spectacular sewer team-up comes to a close.
What’s Good: It makes me so happy when the X-Men can have a story where Wolverine doesn’t save the day. I like the hairy little Canadian as much as the next guy, but I do get a little sick of him always being the solution to whatever problem the X-Men are facing. In issue #9, Dark Beast was revealed as the villain and he’d used the new-and-improved Lizard’s powers to turn Wolverine, Gambit & Storm into lizardmen/women. So, that leaves fixing the whole mess in the lap of Emma and Spider-Man and they have a fun little team-up in the sewer. Earlier in this arc, I was a little hard on Emma’s portrayal as being a little too whiney, but Gischler really makes this interaction work nicely. Emma is at her best as a character when she has someone who is casual, earnest and prone to sophomoric humor to play off of and you won’t find many characters that fit those criteria better than Spidey.
This story arc was also a real success. It told a tight and self-contained X-story by focusing on a core group of characters and allowing them to interact in a purely heroic way with a Marvel mainstay. And….it wasn’t one of those overly long 6-issue stories either.
Chris Bachalo is one of my absolute favorite artists and one side benefit to his great art is that you’re unlikely to ever see him on a 6-8 issue story arc because I don’t think he can quite do a monthly book and have it look like Chris Bachalo; I’ve never seen the guy do crummy looking work just because he got a little behind. So, what we get here is classic Bachalo: frenzied and highly detailed character that overflow with vitality, cute/soft/attractive women and some of the most imaginative page layouts anywhere. Very nice!
What’s Not So Good: Not a whole lot really and they’re more general complaints. Like…..Spider-Man is getting over exposed. He’s in his own title twice a month, he’s in FF, he’s in Avengers, he’s in New Avengers, he’s in Fear Itself, he’s in Spider-Girl, and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head. I love Spidey and enjoyed him in this story, but if Marvel keeps this up, I’ll start seeing him and thinking, “Oh no! Not Spider-Man again!” Note to Marvel Editors: Let’s not go there!
And, as much as I enjoyed the trick of taking a core team of X-Men away from Utopia and getting out of the mayhem, I wouldn’t have minded seeing a C-list character be part of the team just to give them a little more time with the major mutants. Pixie? Anole? Rockslide? Armor?
Finally, it’s really not fair to criticize Medina for this, but I would have rather he just did his style on the few pages he does at the end of the issue rather than trying to flow with Bachalo’s style. It didn’t work all that well, but that’s not surprising given how drastically different their styles are. There are a few artists who flow between styles well, but copying Bachalo would probably be a tall order for anyone and I’d rather see an artist just do what they do best rather than be artistically handcuffed (and I like Medina).
Conclusion: A worthy ending to a fun little X-story. I’m really enjoying seeing this heroic side of the X-Men that get’s away from the tired mutant-persecution angle. Bravo!
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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