Arkea’s assimilation gets underway.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Wood
Art: Olivier Copiel
What They Say:
The school is on lockdown…but if the bad guys can’t get out, neither can the X-Men! John Sublime is back, but is one of the X-Men’s scariest villains not who we should be afraid of? Who or what is Arkea?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Though the focus is on having the women of the X-Men team here, for this old fan of the property from years ago, there’s nothing that stands out as unusual about it as we see the team dealing with things. The opening issue of the series set the stage well enough with the arrival of John Sublime as he attempted to warn them of his siblings arrival and the threat she represents, but naturally their skepticism was properly healthy while the threat itself manifested. Though there are a couple of characters I’m unfamiliar with here, it was easy enough to get into the groove of things here and figure out what’s going on. It also doesn’t hurt that the villain here is new to the comics in general, so that keeps it a bit fresh and without a certain amount of history to it.
The problem for the team here though is that Arkea has already found a host after riding in on the baby with Jubilee. Even worse, Arkea has latch onto Karima, the Omega Sentinel, who is pretty much sound of body but with no mind, hence being put in stasis by Hank and the others. So her waking up and being out is confusing as hell for everyone else, which Arkea gets to take advantage of since she’s simply intent on finding Sublime to exact her revenge. Or at least that’s what she says as she spends most of her time here just going through a few different motions while cementing her familiarity with her new host body and understanding the technology she’s connected to now on this world. Seeing her figure out the already complex systems of the school and use them to put the place into lockdown works well since it keeps everyone else out, allowing her and Rogue to go at it a bit, but we learn that the system is even laughing at Kitty when she tries to change its programming.
There’s a decent bit of dialogue throughout all of this as Rachel and Betsy start to figure out that Sublime is likely on the up and up, though to be trusted about as far as they can spit. Some of what Arkea talks about is intriguing, such as the state of how mutants breed here and the potential for changes there in the world, but also seeing the way she thinks of Sublime and his choices in who to try and align himself with here. There’s also some minor but interesting bits with Jubilee and the mystery baby – who slips with an adorable Totoro plushie. Events here go forward in a decent enough way as we get Rogue fighting against Arkea, but with her and Kitty getting involved in this aspect, they have to struggle with it being Karima’s body, even if Arkea is being honest about the fact that Karima’s mind is empty and there’s nothing there. Forcing Kitty into dealing with the idea that taking out Arkea eliminates Karima is a familiar refrain from over the years, but it plays well here and gives Arkea what she needs to escape for the duration and plan anew.
In Summary:
X-Men moves right along with this arc and what it needs to do by cementing Arkea in her new body, reaffirming her basic mission is still definitely revenge and that Sublime is who she’s after. Sublime’s clearly found a decent group to hook up with for help, and while it certainly doesn’t diminish the team here by being made up of the women, it’d probably help having even more of the overall team there as well. There’s a lot of interesting little areas that can be built up from here and I’m largely liking the dynamic of it all with how they work so well together and just focus on getting the job done. Each brings their own thing to the table in the fight or defense and there’s no real second guessing here, outside of concern for Jubilee, which is tied to the fact she’s toting around a little baby that’s been asleep for quite some time. Jubilee has a decent moment here, which amusingly enough is tied to Sublime having a good character moment, and that makes you wonder what twists and turns are still ahead for all of this.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 26th, 2013
MSRP: $3.99
