Sometime the hard choice is taken out of your hands.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Wood
Art: Olivier Copiel
What They Say:
The X-Men find out what Arkea is capable of, and the phrase “rampaging horde” comes to mind. Can Arkea be defeated? Can the X-Men take down one of their own, if that’s what it takes? Meanwhile, what’s up with Sublime and Rachel? What’s up with Bling and Cipher? What’s up with Jubilee and Bling?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening arc to this X-Men series comes to a close here, as the team that’s not really a team certainly finds themselves facing some really serious trouble. Arkea really managed to come together well overall in the first installment with what she presented as a threat as we saw her take control of the school easily and put a decent moral challenge in front of the team that kept them from really acting to full potential. There was a decent balance of action and thinking going on here as the team was split in different ways to deal with the situation at hand, and to deal with it as Arkea bolted from the school, leaving Kitty to handle things there while the rest went off chasing after her – with Sublime. Considering his past, it’s certainly amusing to see him with this group.
This installment works the two track nature fairly well, with how the cast is broken out. Kitty’s time at the school has her working with several of the students in order to get things figured out with the computer system, only to find that Arkea has utilized the Danger Room to her advantage as it’s generating cloned versions of her that are causing a lot of trouble, from actual combat to eliminating the oxygen in the room that the team was sealed in at first. Kitty’s been a solid leader for a long time and her working with the students and also ensuring that they’re protected themselves is good. I also rather liked that she lets them basically take control of various aspects as it goes on as it harkens back to her early days when she had to struggle with the senior players on the team who were always protecting her. There’s something that feels unfinished about this part of the arc though, which could lead to something more later.
Less clear in a way is what the other team is doing as they land in Budapest, as Arkea has bolted back to the hospital near where the meteor crashed and where she hitched a ride on Shogo with Jubilee. There’s some cute stuff with Jubilee and how she’s trying to claim the baby as her own, but it feels like it’s something for a later story. The main focus is on the rest of them, with Sublime, going into the hospital where the majority of the patients have been co-opted by Arkea since they were getting all sorts of implants to help them live. That makes for tension itself, but it really does come down to the team being smart enough to just go after Arkea herself, which struggling again with the fact that they can’t be sure if Karima is in there. It manages to provide a rather good, if brief, exchange between Arkea and Sublime about things as they have quite the past, but it also lets Karima have her own moment, showing that she’s in there and can play a key role. Sadly, it’s all off-panel and I hope there’s some exploration of what really happened there, though you can infer enough of it.
In Summary:
Bringing this arc to a close, everything feels like it’s happened rather faster than it should have considering the scale of power we were being alluded was involved. It makes sense considering all that happened, but it’s like it got snuffed just a bit too early. Kitty’s arc was fun as it got us to see more of the students, and to see Bling trying to find an out or two in her dealings with a certain other student. But we mostly got to see the team as a whole working the two track storyline here and saving the day, but being uncertain as to whether it was really all brought to a resolution. The positives that come out of it are definitely there, especially with Karima and potentially with Jubilee, but there’s also some damage as well that will make an impact. The book is certainly fun and the team is one that definitely works well in general that I imagine a lot of fans would like. Having been out of the X-Men loop for so long, it’s certainly appealing to me.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 31st, 2013
MSRP: $3.99
