By: Mike Carey (writer), Khoi Pham (pencils), Tom Palmer, Craig Yeung & Nelson DeCastro (inks), Marte Gracia (colors), Cory Petit (letters), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Daniel Ketchum (editor)
The Story: An X-team consisting of Magneto, Rogue, Gambit, Frenzy, Legion and the Professor head off to “capture” several of Legion’s personalities that have broken free.
What’s Good: The various Legion personalities are kinda neat. I do have a fundamental problem with them that I’ll talk about below, but seeing new mutants introduced who have weird and wacky powers is fun and a good call-back to the old days when it seemed like new mutants were turning up every issue. I don’t want to go back to those days, but it’s still fun to see new characters sometimes. It’s only a slight spoiler, but there’s one guy named Chain who turns everyone he touches into a clone of himself except with a different weapon, so when Rogue and Magneto fight “him” they’re really fighting an entire city. Then there’s another personality that is a little girl that feed off and manipulates emotion. Seeing these new characters is kinda fun. Can’t wait to see what Styx can do!
The pacing of this issue is also pretty solid as the team resolves a few of the wayward Legion personalities in this issue. When I first heard that Legion had 6 breakaway personalities, I groaned a little bit in fear that we might have a 6-issue story arc, but that appears not to be the case. And, to his credit, Carey hasn’t given us many overly long stories during his multi-year tenure on the title.
The remaining positive is just the freshness of this team. These are all characters that aren’t getting much to do in the other X-books AND the issue is completely devoid of Cyclops and Wolverine. Even if a few of these characters aren’t my favorites, there are fans who enjoy them and it makes sense for at least one of the X-books to focus on “other” characters. Heck, each book should focus on unique sets of characters, but that would be asking too much.
What’s Not So Good: This issue has a few problems. Let’s start with how the art looks rushed and skimpy. There just isn’t much detail in these panels and what detail is present has minimal depth to it (especially in the fight with Chain). In a lot of panels, the characters look like they are hovering in mid-air instead of standing on the ground. The coloring is also that problematic, overly highlighted style that I’m just not a fan of. Mind you, there are some panels in there that are quite good (those in Styx’s lair), but this is what happens when you have multiple inkers on the issue. It has all the hallmarks of an issue where the art was rushed to meet deadlines.
There are also a couple of story problems that are bugging me. I missed the 90’s comics boom, so I’m not that familiar with Legion as a character. But, how the hell are his multiple personalities manifesting as tangible humans? Is he like the Multiple Man? I always thought he was just a mutant with multiple personalities and he therefore manifested multiple power sets. But, maybe I’m missing something.
And it pains me to say this because I love her character, but Rogue’s power-set is making less and less sense to me. At one point in a battle where she and Magneto are fighting a group of bad guys, she decides that Magneto isn’t doing well enough, so she absorbs his power (thus incapacitating him) and carries on alone. What is the point of that? I can kinda understand a point to Rogue’s powers when she touches multiple mutants and creates mutant Voltron, but what is the point to touching a single mutant? And I’m also confused about whether she has any baseline invulnerability anymore. For a character whose power has changed over time, they kinda need to explain it a little more.
Conclusion: Some neat ideas, but mediocre art and a few plot problems hold this back. I also feel like this story is getting in the way of the MUCH more enticing trip into space to find the Starjammers.
Grade: D+
-Dean Stell
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