By: Jason Aaron (writer), Adam Kubert (penciler), Mark Roslan (inks), Jason Keith (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: The final issue where we see how the X-Men split up and why.
What’s Good: It’s always nice to jiggle the status quo. The X-Men have spent the last ~3 years living in San Francisco with a big “Welcome” sign hanging outside for any mutant who wanted to join them. That was fun and enjoyable, but now we’re going to get something new and that’s a good thing. As long as the status quo is constantly shifting under the character’s feet, the writers and artists always have new things that can help to inspire them. There are all kinds of cool possibilities from the X-Men splitting into two groups. In some ways, it can be a small microcosm of the superhero Civil War and in others, it’ll just be fun to see how the two groups respond differently to external events. Like, what happens now if a mutant baby is born: Do both sides send a team? Do they consult each other first? Do they fight? Movement forward in the story is almost always a positive.
The other neat thing in this issue was that the young mutants made good and helped to take down the super-Sentinel. Even though the story of the teenage hero taking down a Big Bad who seemed to tough for them is not new, it’s always one of those things that make me smile. Always…
What’s Not So Good: This wasn’t a great issue from an artistic standpoint and I really question why the X-editors chose to end the series with Adam Kubert because I thought he really struggled in places. I mean, you had Alan Davis signed to do an issue… Why not let him do the finale? There are a LOT of stiff looking characters. It almost looks like Kubert was using Poser because even during the fight scenes, the characters have bent arms and legs indicating action, but they look more like posed action figures… There’s just NO energy anywhere. There’s also a lot of weird anatomy (a Wolverine biceps opposite the elbow joint?) and weird uses of muscle groups. I’m also not a fan of his interpretation of Wolverine. He looks just a little too young and smooth faced everywhere and I really don’t think he wears one of those dorky Kenny Chesney cowboy hats with the sides scrunched in. The man is a cowboy from the Canadian Rockies, he wears a cowboy hat because it keeps the rain off his head, not as a style accessory. Where are the X-editors when this crap is going on? Do they supervise the artists at all?
The story also got choppy. The story of the “brain slugs” that got put on Emma, Namor, Magneto, etc. at the mutant museum attack just resolved itself. Actually, we don’t really know how the slugs came off, we just see a panel of Emma’s foot squishing the slug and the problem is resolved. And the new Hellfire Club feels very tacked-on to this issue. I understand that they caused all of this, but when they show the kids eating popcorn and watching the mayhem from across the bay, I had no clue who those kids were– a caption box would have been nice. Actually, the more I see them, the less I like the new Hellfire club. They’re kids and kids aren’t scary. All adults know that even really smart kids can be outwitted pretty easily by adults who have guile and experience (or upper body strength). I guess my point is that even if they are smarter, they can’t be that much smarter, and certainly not smart enough to make up for lack of experience since it isn’t like the X-Men are a bunch of dummies.
Conclusion: This series and issue got us from Point A to Point B, but it wasn’t great and I question the art choices in this final issue. But, it does open up a bunch of possibilities for the X-Men. Going forward we can still have the SF based stories that we’ve enjoyed (without Wolverine in every story) AND cover some new ground with Wolverine’s group.
Grade: D+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion