In the aftermath of the Magneto War, the UN has shocked the world by accepting Dr. Alda Huxley's (The most thinly-veiled literary reference in the history of comics) plan to give Magneto a country of his own to govern: Genosha. When Wolverine-- Magneto's #1 enemy-- first heard the news, Professor X had to knock him out psionically to keep him from killing Magnus right there and then. Now Wolvie's home at the X-Mansion, running simulation after simulation on how to stop the Master Of Magnetism's ticker for good-- teammates be damned. Meanwhile, the X-Men mourn the death of Joseph, the through-the-looking-glass "clone" of Magneto who fought alongside them since "Onslaught".
This issue is a study in contradictions. It's the first X-book in a good long time to not insult the reader's intelligence in its plot and script, but the reader gets insulted anyway by the X-Office's willingness to ignore continuity and to, at issue's end, blow away any hope of artistic merit or serious, involved storytelling. The core plot of the issue is compelling, illustrating the first major rift in ideology to surface amongst the X-Men in a good long time, and Joe Casey scripts it to perfection with darkly introspective thoughts and cuttingly real dialogue. Storm and Wolverine, one of the team's most loyal pairings, snap and bite at each other's throats like dogs when Logan makes up his mind to kill Magneto, whether or not the other X-Men try to stop him. And when Professor Xavier goes to confront Dr. Huxley, she instead throws back into his face the sort of question that should have hit home long ago-- just what was Xavier doing alongside the X-Men in the Arctic? Everyone's talking like human beings at their bitterest, for the first time in months. And it looks like things aren't just gonna take the high, rosy road to happy resolution-- Wolverine coldly refuses to attend Joseph's funeral despite all the entreaties by the ones he loves; and at issue's end, he's screaming into the face of Xavier, the man who rescued him from the abyss. But it's that ending that, paradoxically, absolutely kills the book.You see, just as Logan and Xavier's shouting match reaches a turning point, a... how to put this delicately... ridiculous alien pimp appears out of nowhere and shanghaies the team into space, where they are confronted by massive, freakish aliens with no eyes while fish swim through the void around them. At the whim of the X-Office to do a "nifty space story", the most compelling character development to roll down the path since God only knows when is sacrificed at random. And then it adds insult to injury that this scene is ridiculously scripted. Xavier, responding to Storm's comment that something is amiss with her connection to the Earth's weather patterns, responds "...Impossible as it seems-- we're not on Earth anymore!" 1.): When you're floating through space filled with fish and freakish critters, it's a dead giveaway that you're not in Westchester; and 2.) "Impossible as it may seem"? The X-Men randomly teleport into space with more frequency than most people commute to work. A bizarre and uncharted dimension would, at this point, be "Ho-hum. Untold intergalactic wonders again".
There's one more irksome article of disregard for the reader in the sudden reappearance of the Danger Room. We've seen the DR once since its utter disintegration during OPERATION: ZERO TOLERANCE, and then it was a cobbled-together, non-holographic training room similar to the original pre-Shi'ar DR. But now, it has full holographic capabilities again, for no particular reason. To the best of my knowledge, Rooms To Go does not offer a "multivariate artificially-intelligent training center and war room"; did the X-Men just kinda build it from memory, MacGyver-like, out of a baseball card, stick of gum, and a ballpoint pen?Again, a study in contradictions: Arguably the best-written and best-illustrated X-Men story since Kelly and Seagle's early peak, but everything is thrown out the window by one ridiculous twist that looks to become de rigeur under the new "administration". The ranking I assign to this issue only takes into account the poor technical quality of the last two pages, and not the immense insult it delivers to the reader; otherwise, this ranking would be about 6.9 points lower. 7.0 out of 10. R.I.Y.L.: Cable, Avengers, Generation X, X-Force, Gen13, Wildcats.
"So... can you tell what I'm thinking?" -Alda Huxley, in her first words to Professor Xavier Back To ReviewsVol. 2, Issue #18
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