|
|
 |
Well, this is the end. We have finally gotten to the last ever CBCU I will be doing. It’s like the end of an era for me, after getting books from this guy since 1992, dating back to when my father picked them up every month or so and I really did buy the last 16 years of comics when they came out. I feel so old now. Anyway, this is the A-list X-Men stories. How do I know they are A-list? Well, the Messiah CompleX epic runs through it. If you have a problem with the selection of A-list, well tough, this is my column. Onto the last-ever edition…
Spoilers Ahead.
Catching Up – X-Men: Messiah CompleX
I will start with the Messiah CompleX story.
-Chapter Eight – New X-Men #45- Cable deals with Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers as X-Force shows up, with X-23 and Lady Deathstrike having a good fight. Layla and Madrox are in the future and get smacked around, as Predator X continues to head towards the X-Mansion. Caliban is killed saving Warpath, and Cable escapes with the baby.
-Chapter Nine – X-Men #206- Layla and Madrox have an M tattooed on their face. The X-Men deal with the fallout of last issues battle as Cerebra is being rebuilt at the Mansion. They find Cable, who is heading towards Forge. Forge is already downed when Cable shows up, and he’s shot in the back by the X-Traitor, Bishop? Good reveal there.
-Chapter Ten – Uncanny X-Men #494- Bishop is the traitor but before he can kill the baby, Gambit and the Marauders show up and take the baby. The X-Men show up and Bishop skews the story so they don’t know he’s the traitor. The X-Men go off to find Gambit as Cable contacts Professor X to accompany him. Meanwhile, in the future, Layla tells Madrox why they are there, to speak to the young Lucas Bishop.
-Chapter Eleven – X-Factor #27- Layla and Madrox talk to a young Bishop and learn that this new Mutant birth will lead to a million human deaths that caused the camps he’s in now, and he wants to stop it. Well, there’s you motive. Layla sends Madrox back home, but she stays in the future. Madrox returns home with his tattoo. Gambit brings the baby back home (Muir Island), to Mystique, who has killed Sinister, and she wants to resurrect Rogue. The New X-Men come into contact with Predator X who is eating the dead mutant corpses as the X-Force descend upon the Marauders.
-Chapter Twelve – New X-Men #46- X-Force and the Marauders have a great battle (drawn well by Ramos), and all hell breaks loose when the X-Men show up. Mystique uses the baby to revive Rogue, though Rogue still is comatose. Cable takes the baby and is about to leave when the New X-Men teleport Predator X to the big fight at Muir Island, and now Cable is stuck between Bishop and the Predator.
-Chapter Thirteen - X-Men #207- Predator X takes off an arm of Bishop as the X-Men deal with the Predator and the New X-Men tackle the Marauders. Cyclops demands that he be given the baby, and Cable obliges. Cyclops soon realizes the best chance for her to have a future is to be in Cable’s care, so Cable takes the baby and teleports away. Rogue is resurrected, but hates Mystique. She wipes her memory with her power and tells Gambit not to follow her when she leaves. So Cable is gone, Bishop gets up and fires his gun. It misses Cyclops but hits Xavier in the head, and the X-Men believe he’s dead now. Charles is gone, the dream is dead, and the X-Men are over. The final 6 parts of the Messiah CompleX had all the makings of an epic, one that seemed to be overlooked by the general masses. But still, this kicked a ton of ass and really changed the X-Men, something a storyline hasn’t really done since Age of Apocalypse. This is just as good, in my opinion, and this needs to be read. 6/6.
-X-Men: Divided We Stand #’s 1-2- This is just two issues looking at all the different X-characters and where they are at after Messiah CompleX. Some are pissed (Hellion, Anole), some struggle to deal with it (Nori), some are lost (Cannonball, Forge) and some are sentimental about it (Beast). All-in-all, it is worthless if you haven’t read the Messiah CompleX, but it just adds so much to the effects of the storyline. 2/2. (8/8 Total).
-X-Men: Messiah CompleX Mutant Files- This is a Handbook style book going over the lesser characters of the arc not yet seen in other Handbook issues. You know what you are getting with these. 1/1 (9/9 Total).
-Uncanny X-Men #’s 495-497- After the really intense Messiah CompleX, this arc does a very nice job of easing readers back into Uncanny. Scott and Emma start with a vacation in the Savage Land as Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler travel to Germany and Russia. Of course, things can’t go well for long. Someone finds out that Colossus and his bodies are in Russia and go about capturing them, and Scott and Emma learn of a problem in San Francisco, where Angel was staying. The Russian trio are captured, and Scott and Emma are shocked to see what is going on in San Fran, they’ve reverted to their hippy 1969 Haight-Ashbury ways. By the end of this, Scott and Emma don’t really know the cause of it. The ending was satisfying (read TPL archives to find out!) and like I said, it was a needed break from the heavy stuff we’ve seen in the previous four years of X-stories. 3/3 (12/12 Total).
-X-Factor #’s 28-31- Rahne leaves the team and Madrox gets a little upset about it. Siryn learns that Madrox is the father of her child, but Madrox doesn’t know it. Rictor is about to leave the team when they get sucked into an attempt by an old Purifier to destroy what used to be Mutant Town out of revenge. He’s mad that X-Factor got him kicked out of the group and he actually enlists the aid of Arcade for help. The ex-Purifier kills himself since once he dies Mutant Town will explode. X-Factor goes to work helping people caught in the explosions and even stop the rest of the explosions when Rictor destroys the computer system. All told, another great 4-issue run from X-Factor, as Peter David writes characters that interact with each other very well, almost like a sit-com/dramedy than a comic book, and their interactions, however minor, lend this book a certain type of story you really don’t see anywhere else. 4/4 (16/16 Total).
-X-Factor: The Quick and the Dead #1- This is all about Quicksilver have an internal monologue in jail and finding out he still has his powers. I don’t know if it’s just a dream of his or if he will appear again, but it was really just a way to get someone to spend $3.00 for one sentence, “Quicksilver has his powers back.” He vows to make a difference now and finally be good. Can’t give it a point due to it not really being all that essential. 0/1 (16/17 Total).
-X-Men: Legacy #’s 208-211- So Xavier had his brains blown out, and the X-Men thought he was dead, then he disappeared, which I must’ve missed in Messiah CompleX. Anyway, the Acolytes stole him to reconstruct his mind, Magneto is brought in to help, Xavier’s mind relives key moments, and he revives. He still has holes in his memory, though. He has a confrontation with Exodus, where he sees all the mutants who have died because of him and he turns down leading the Acolytes. He walks out in search of his past. He goes to an old friend where he learns tests run on him as a child were done by Mr. Sinister himself. It seems that Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club is connected as well. Charles’ old friend dies and some soldiers descend upon Xavier’s room when Gambit show up. I really liked the first three issues, especially the scenes of Charles’ mind which were done by different artists than the regular artist. I’m gonna go the full monty here, as we get an interesting look at Charles’ history we haven’t really seen before. 4/4 (20/21 Total).
-The Bottom Line- Well, the last is also the best. Only one issue was pointless (ha, a pun I will never use again, I promise). Just a great run of X-Titles and I think the X-titles are slowly coming back into the realm of Marvel’s best titles, as they’ve sort of sat in the background since Morrison’s run on them ended in the early 00’s. Just a really fantastic fun of titles. So long CBCU, we had a great run while it lasted, and at least we can go out on top.
|
|
|
|
|
Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
|
|
|
|