New Mutants #22 (Age of X: Chapter 2) – Review

By: Mike Carey (writer), Steve Kurth (art), Allen Martinez (inks), Brian Reber (colors), Chris Eliopoulos (letters), Jake Thomas & Sebastian Girner (assistant editors) & Daniel Ketchum (editor)

The Story: More is revealed in Age of X, Chapter #2.

What’s Good: Most of the really good things about this issue come from the editorial/publishing side of the equation.  The story is good too, but let’s take a second to slap some editorial backs.  First, good call to stretch out the opening act of this story.  The standard pacing to a 6-chapter story is two issues of opening, 2 boring middle issues and a 2-issue finale.  It makes a LOT of sense to stretch the opening because the boring middle act only is relevant if the story is actually going to change something in the X-universe.  Call it cynicism, but after reading hundreds of X-titles, nothing really changes.  So, let’s just have the fun mystery of the opening act flow directly into the slam-bang of the finale!

Second, it is great that this is truly a “Chapter 2” rather than an issue spotlighting the New Mutants as they deal with the same problems elucidated in Chapter 1 (“And now let’s go see how this set of characters is dealing with the same problem”).  Marvel had a nice opportunity to do this with Zeb Wells departure from New Mutants and they capitalize by making the events of this issue flow directly from Chapter 1.

Third, let’s give Marvel a little credit for just having the action of Age of X occur within the ongoing series rather than doing what they did with Shadowland or Chaos War and running a separate miniseries.  Those things are just sales gimmicks and while they do generate some sales, they raise fans’ expectations for the magnitude of the story and that leads to a cheapening of the underlying property.

As for the story itself, the mysteries are still building and that is fun and enjoyable.  Much of this issue deals with Rogue trying to get to the bottom of the appearance of Kitty Pryde in the last issue.  To investigate this, she has to invade Danger’s jailhouse where a LOT of mutants who seem to have some clues about what is really going on are being held.  We also get some tempting tidbits from Cyclops/Basilisk about the possible nature of the human troops attacking the Force Barrier protecting Fortress X.