Face front, True Believers, and welcome back to The Marvel Rundown! We are back this week taking a peak at Marvel’s Merry Mutant as the cold war between the The X-Men and The US Government heats up following the fallout from Raid on Graymalkin with X-Men #10. In the Rundown, Wolverine and friends kill demon Nazis in Hellhunters #2, journey to the galaxy far, far way in Star Wars: New Legacy #1 , and explore what it means to be Storm with Storm: Lifedream #1
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X-Men #10
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciler: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parson
Colorist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letter: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Cover Artits: Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, & Marte Garcia
X-Men #10 is the issue I have been wanting from this series since it launched. The overall From the Ashes era of X-Men has been scattershot in themes and messages, but the one consistent throughline in the team books has been this sense of collective trauma and loss after the Fall of Krakoa. While interesting I have been longing for this team of X-Men to take meaningful action against the oppressors. This is the team of Juggernaut, Magneto, and Quinten Quire. They should be trying to mess someone up!
This issue scratches my itch to see some fascists get their teeth kicked in and being powerless to stop it. X-Men #10 is a thrilling issue that is full of kinetic frenzy alongside unhinged discussions of Mutually Assured Destruction and Shakespeare. Jed MacKay takes a simple plot as “Hero verbally confronts Villain” and makes it engaging at all levels.
It is captivating in large part thanks to MacKay’s grasp on the principal characters’ voices namely Cyclops. I am a staunch Cyclops fan and while he has gotten his moments here and there, series writer Jed MacKay has returned a sense of vulnerability to Scott Summers that we haven’t really seen since the Morrison era. There has been in part to the character arc for the series and its starting to pay off. In contrast to the second issue of the series, X-Men #10 doesn’t show Cyclops having a panic attack after yelling at a government screw but instead shows that the X-Men have begun to respond in the shadow war by taking asymmetrical action against the Government and ONE facilities via the Hellions Protocol—A quick strike team helmed by the Bedlam Brothers (talk about a deep cut), Boom-Boom, Locus (another deep cut), and Fantomex.
The art by Netho Diaz, Sean Parson, and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo is equally as kinetic and just as responsible for making this issue something more than a talking heads story. For the more action-oriented pages Diaz uses a lot of manga inspired page layouts with 2-4 panels pages all drawn at various angles to convey sense of action and energy. This is quite effective at not only giving that sense of action but also alters the reader’s sense of time. These pages feel fast because they are meant to be these quick successive strikes in the story to show to Lundqvist not to mess around with the X-Men.
Then you get to the more dialog focused pages where Diaz does uses formalist 6-9 panel grids with clean borders, but the composition of each panel is visually interesting as we see frequent close ups on the characters faces and their intense reactions. One of my favorite pages takes the 9-panel grid and instead of showing 9 individual panels, Diaz overlays the grid over a single image to provide a since of timing and ensure the dialog hits the correct beat. It is used only once but it is used to great effect.
X-Men #10 is the shot in the arm that the series needed after the more muddling Raid on Graymalkin. I am ecstatic that this series is beginning to live up to its hype after showing some promise in earlier issues.
Final Verdict: Buy!
RAPID RUNDOWN!
- Hellhunters #2
- The premise for Hellhunters by Philip Kennedy Johnson and Adam Gorham is brilliant; a World War II set comic where a Peggy Carter and Nick Fury team up with this era’s Ghost Rider to kill demon Nazis. There’s not much plot other than all Nazis must die which really is about as much is needed for this. Issue two sees Wolverine show up while killing Nazis in truly bloody fashion. Kennedy Johnson continues to deliver some of the most fun horror comics coming out of Marvel right now. Demonic Nazis possessing anyone they can to spread their evil seems particularly relevant to this moment in time. So seeing them get dispatched thanks to Adam Gorham’s art is satisfying. He seems to relish the chance to draw Nazis get hacked and shot to pieces. This is a pretty violent book. Given how many of Marvel’s horror books right now are Red Band, it’s surprising this wasn’t one of them. The star of the book though might be colorist Frank Martin. Martin’s colors do the bulk of the storytelling in this issue by conveying this invasion of demonic forces. He shifts from soft yellows and greens when the characters walk around the forests of war torn Europe to harsher gem tone hues during action scenes. For anyone looking pure pulpy entertainment of both the literary and fleshy variety, this book should be up your alley. – DM
- Star Wars: A New Legacy #1
- Last week saw the Star Wars line poised to move into the future but before the new chapter begins, it’s time for a look back celebrating a decade of the Marvel Star Wars era. This anniversary celebration is written by the three primary architects of the Star Wars ongoing title: writers Charles Soule, Jason Aaron, and Kieron Gillen. Joining them are artists Ramon Rosanas, Leonard Kirk, and Salva Espín as well as colorists Neeraj Menon, Jay David Ramos, and Israel Silva respectively. VC’s Clayton Cowles provides the letters for each of the three stories. None of these shorts are especially remarkable stories but it’s a fun reunion with a number of comics-original characters that reminds readers how much has been added to the mythos over these ten years. Soule’s story is the longest, a caper featuring Dr. Aphra, Sana, Beilert Valance, and Darth Momin. Aphra is one of the brightest spots in the Marvel comics and any excuse to read her in action is appreciated. The second story by Jason Aaron and Leonard Kirk spotlights a squad of Stormtroopers fighting to regain the respect and awe their presence commanded before the Rebel Alliance’s victory at the first Death Star, before people began to fear them and view them as villains. It’s a chilling parable about how authoritarians and fascists view themselves as noble. The final story is a short slapstick story, once again featuring Dr. Aphra, alongside her murder droids and the Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan. Salva Espín’s expressive art on this was the visual highlight, and was the one that had the biggest divergence from the typical house style realism of the Star Wars titles. This is boiler plate “anniversary comic” stuff that doesn’t really add any new depth to the universe but offers an entertaining diversion. It made me want to dig back into some of these comics again and rediscover the side characters that make the Star Wars galaxy charming.
- Storm: Lifedream #1
- An assemblage of all-star talent including writers John Jennings, Angélique Roché, Brittney Morris, and Curtis Baxter along with artists Edwin Galmon, Alitha E. Martinez, Charles Stewart III, and Karen S. Darboe come together for Storm: Lifedream. Part of the Marvel Voices imprint that celebrates Black characters and creatives, it has grown to include other underrepresented communities that love comics and want to see themselves in the characters populating the Marvel Universe, but this special is solely for our goddess Storm. In a distant corner of the Marvel Universe, a race of interdimensional archivists have selected Storm of the 616 as their next subject to be included in their archive. Using the young archivists, Akasha and Ptolemy, is a delightful framing device for exploring Storm’s past, and then the stuff hits the fan in the form of an evil AI that shares the archive system with aspirations of escape. In its own way, it is highly reminiscent of a TV clip show giving readers a compressed history of our favorite Omega-level mutant. The uneven story transitions work against the solid artwork, and these folks do their thing bringing some of Storm’s darkest moments to the page. Readers can find the joy in Storm’s history with the Creators Roundtable and interview with the voice of Storm, Allison Sealy-Smith, but I would have loved to have seen it on the page, especially the love and friendships she’s had over the years. All in all, it’s a nice addition to the Storm mythos. – GC3
