X-Men #20 – Review

 

By: Victor Gischler (writer), Will Conrad (artist), Chris Sotomayor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Folks are still trying to acquire Sentinels.  The X-Men can’t have that.

Five Things: 

1. A unique team.  The team we get in this issue consists of Storm, Psylocke, Jubilee, Warpath, Colossus and Domino.  Other than Psylocke (and to a lesser extent Colossus), these are X-Men who we haven’t seen a lot of recently.  Sure, they pop up from time to time, but they usually haven’t been too central over the last few years.  This title is also notable for who isn’t in it.  There’s no Wolverine in this title.  No Emma Frost.  Even Cyclops’ appearance is limited to his sending the team on a mission.  If you keep this team line-up, this title really can have a purpose and not just another excuse to see the same cluster of X-Men every month.  One of the great things about the X-Men of my youth was the concept of the team.  You could point to an issue where Rogue or Psylocke “joined” the team.  Too often today’s stories descend into a gaggle of mutants who get forced into a mission.

2. A team with an attitude.  The attitude for the Team Cyclops in this Regenesis time is really great.  They’re willing to be heroes, but they’re also going to look out for mutant issues and they aren’t too concerned with political correctness or whether they are causing an international incident.  So, in this issue when they find some people trafficking in Sentinel technology, they send the team to take care of things.  Along the way, they run into War Machine who wants the X-Men to lay back, not cause an international incident and allow diplomatic channels to have their chance.  In the past, the X-Men might have walked away at that point to avoid pissing off the Avengers, but not now.  Nope. Their attitude is that they’re on a mission and War Machine can help or get out of the way.  Bonus that they pounded on War Machine who has been turned into such an unlikeable character recently.

3. Pretty nice art.  No one is winning an Eisner for this issue, but this is pretty solid art.  Good storytelling.  Good characters.  There are a few really nice panels in here too (the early half-splash of Domino is very nice).  Now, there are also a few panels that kinda get away from Conrad where the faces start to look like modern Deodato, Jr. (and that isn’t a good thing).  But, overall I think Conrad did a very solid job.  I’m not quite as on board with the coloring choices.  Conrad’s art is very heavily inked and he’s already indicated his shading with his blacks.  I just don’t think it’s necessary to also add highlights to this type of art.  It just looks wrong, like the coloring is too bright for the linework.  But, that doesn’t make the overall art experience “bad”.  Just not as good as it could be.