X-Men: Second Coming – Review

Writers: Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Matt Fraction, Zeb Wells, and Mike Carey

Pencillers: David Finch, Terry Dodson, Ibraim Roberson, Greg Land, and Mike Choi with Stuart Immonen, Lan Medina, Nathan Fox, and Esad Ribic.

And so here it is: the last installment of the “Messiah Trilogy” or Messianic X Cycle (Say it. Make it catch on!). We’ve been through Endangered Species, Messiah Complex and Messiah War. Now it’s time for Second Coming, the event that concludes three years of X-Men stories. It’s been some of the darkest times in X-Men history. They’ve exiled themselves to an island nation after Norman Osborne and the Dark Avengers attacked them in San Francisco (Read Utopia for that), which then caused Magneto to return—with his powers back—and pledge allegiance to Cyclops. The Black Queen raised an army of dead mutants to attack their new home (Necrosha). In the meantime, Cyclops has been sending his own wet works team out to kill every threat to mutant kind, and they kill plenty. And Cable is off the future raising Hope, the mutant messiah, in a wasteland of a timeline literally blown to pieces by Bishop.  But X-Force has killed pretty much all except for their first target: Bastion, the robot-made-man-then-decapitated-and-later-made-cyborg-by-attaching-the-head-onto-a-Nimrod-sentinel-from-the-future. You know, one of those. And Cable has stranded Bishop in a future so distant that the sun is about to consume the Earth. It’s time for Hope to go back to the present and join the X-Men.

Now, that creative team. Well…it’s not the magic we had in Messiah Complex, nor is it the uniqueness we had in Messiah War. Kyle and Yost basically own this series. Pretty much every majorly important thing that happens in Second Coming happens in their issues.  Still, Mike Carey and Zeb Wells are both fantastic too. In fact, Zeb Well’s is surprisingly good as he was the one writer everyone expected to fall short. Unfortunately, it’s Matt Fraction’s writing that sticks out like an ugly chick in a swimsuit catalog. It’s not always bad, but it’s hard to believe that Fraction read a single issue of Cable or X-Force before writing Hope. When Wells, Kyle, Yost, and Carey are writing, the character is consistent. Yet Fraction writers her (and I’ve said this before) like a bipolar Pixie. His transitions are awful. At the end of the first act, Colossus is freaking out about Illyana being sent to limbo but shuts up when he sees Kurt’s dead body.  Fraction begins act two with Colossus smiling and suggesting a vampire movie to Kittie as she’s confined to her ghost chamber. What the hell? Everyone who was in the field are still standing around Kurt, he’s scared to death that his sister is dead too, and for some reason he takes the time to rent Twilight for his ghost girlfriend? And the thing is…that’ not even the only inconsistent part. Let’s move to the transition between act 2 and 3. In the end of Act 2, Beast gives an update of the wounded, including the fact that “Iceman has third degree energy burns over 25% of his body.” That sounds relative serious and a good reason why Iceman should be out of the game, right? Apparently not because we see Iceman without a scratch taking down a Nimrod with Psylocke and Fantomex. At this point, the other writers seem to have said “F it. Fraction ignored his injuries, we’ll use Iceman too.” What made Messiah Complex and Messiah War awesome was the proof that the writers were working together. In Second Coming we get four writers who do and one who ignores his peers. Having said that, the times Fraction is good, he’s really good. When Nightcrawler learns about X-Force in the second chapter was very well written as was the very last segment of the crossover, which we’ll get into later since it’s the end, but Fraction makes up for a lot of his bad writing there. Nightcrawler’s funeral…. not so much. But back to the writers who really brought their best to the plate. Carey is unsurprising. His last full issue of Cypher taking down the Nimrods is superb (in its writing…we’ll talk about art next). He writes every character perfectly. Even when he’s thrown a new one like Hope, it’s like he sat down, read every issue of Cable took a deep breath and said “yeah, I see what Swierczynksi’s doing with her. She’s not just young female Cable, but she is her father’s daughter nonetheless” and then wrote her. Prodigy describes Hope as the “voodoo doll for the whole mutant race.” Carey is basically the voodoo doll of every X-writer, and yet, like Hope, still has his own kind of power. Wells gives the best line of foreshadowing ever. When Hope and Dani are fighting, Dani says “I’m not the person you want to be putting your hands on.” The fact that Hope powering mutants by touch doesn’t happen until after Second Coming, and only for newly powered mutants, makes this line pretty awesome when returning to the crossover. But his best writing is in the first chapter of the last issue (confusing, I know) when he writers from Professor X’s point of view after Hope destroys Bastion and simply wants to curl up next to what is left of her father, and then when she wakes up and talks to Magneto for a little bit. We get the two seniors of the X-Men and both written so wonderfully. And Kyle and Yost? Well, seriously, their last X-Force issue when Hope comes into power is just fantastic, but it’s also their little beats along the way. For instance, at the end of act two, as Cyclops is about to send Cable and X-Force on a suicide mission. Wolverine blames Hope for what happened to Kurt,  but instead of telling Cable to hurry up and move out, he tells him to “get on with it.” “Get on with it” basically telling Cable to go to Hope, tell her he loves her, and goodbye. They (Cable and Wolverine) both know they’re going to die. Not even Wolverine can be callous towards a daughter about to lose her father, even if she doesn’t know it. And it prepares the reader. Why would Wolverine think it important to make sure Cable does this? Because a few pages later, Cyclops admits to having sent them all to die.

Onto art…sadly, the crossover falters a lot in this department. The only main artists that fit here are Ibraim Roberson and Mike Choi (all the “with” artists do no harm). And while Terry Dodson’s art isn’t bad in any way, it just doesn’t match the story. It’s jarring. His art would be great for a fun Spider-Man story, but for the story about the X-Men making their honest-to-god last stand? It’s just not serious enough. But at least Dodson’s art has quality. Because the fact they not only included Greg Land and his pornographic style, but paired him with one of the best writers of the series is just a sin. A comic book sin. His style doesn’t match, and his art is just bad. Every woman looks exactly the same. At one point it really looks like he just drew the same female boy twice but gave one a gun to indicate which was Hope and which was Rogue. And let’s not forget the most awful double page spread ever where he cuts out Hope’s legs but gracefully leaves her vagina. But we’ve heard every Greg Land complaint a thousand times before, so let’s just move on. You know who really should have been the artists here? Well, everyone from Messiah Complex would have worked, but instead, I would have loved to see Ariel Olivetti and Clayton Crain. Pairing them with Choi and Roberson would have given that “this is it” feeling to the entire story. And I really would have loved to see Olivetti’s Nimrods. That would have been awesome. Oh well.

X-Force/Cable: Messiah War – Review

Written by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Duane Swierczynski, Art by Mike Choi, Sonia Oback, Ariel Olivetti, and Clayton Crain

So far, we’ve looked at Endangered Species (the tone-setter to the Messiah Trilogy), and Messiah Complex, the first actual part of the trilogy. This week we’ve got Messiah War, the often-criticized second installment. Being hailed as the sequel to one of the greatest X-Men stories that have ever been told might have set up expectations this much smaller crossover could never live up to. However, it does seem that recent feedback of Messiah War has been much more positive than when it was originally released. Yet even with more positive criticism, the biggest question remains: Is this story actually relevant to the Messiah Trilogy?

Absolutely.

The first question is always “what happens?” Maybe this is where Messiah War is lacking, because it can be summed up too easily. Bishop teams up with Stryfe to kill Cable and Hope. That’s kind of it. Of course, Bishop doesn’t tell Stryfe about Hope or how important she is—good or evil. To gain Stryfe’s allegiance, Bishop tracks down a weakened Apocalypse and helps Stryfe kill his father…or maker. Meanwhile, Cyclops is freaking out and has Beast make time machines for X-Force so that they can go the future, retrieve Cable, and bury Bishop six feet under. When X-Force arrive in the future, they find themselves trapped in a time net…thing. There seems to be a lot going on for a seven issue story, but the one criticism I do have on the series is that it’s about one issue too long. There’s a bit of padding early in the story, especially dealing with Deadpool.

Which brings us to the writers. This goes for all three—their writing in the second half of the crossover is much stronger than the first. The consistency that was so strong in Messiah Complex got off to a rough start in War (yet there will still be a worse example) as Swierczysnki didn’t seem to understand Kyle and Yost’s style, and vice versa. By the fourth chapter, however, they begin to move as one, and for the rest of the story, that unity of storytelling is much stronger. We also get into the heads of the characters a lot more than we did in Complex or we will in Second Coming. Our three scribes move between Cable, Bishop, Stryfe, Archangel, and finally Apocalypse (though only Kyle and Yost write from his point of view, sadly) in a way that doesn’t feel unnatural. What hurts the writing most, early on, was the need to recap the events of Messiah Complex and Cable for the reader. And Kyle and Yost, who wrote the first chapter, actually take a while to do this—again, stretching time. It makes sense that they would, considering that a lot of the readers coming on would be new ones wanting the sequel to Complex, but it was a bit much.

X-Men: Messiah Complex – Review

Writers: Ed Brubaker, Peter David, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Mike Carey

Pencilers: Mark Silvestri, Billy Tan, Scot Eaton, Humberto Ramos, and Chris Bachalo

There probably will be spoilers in this about the entire Messiah Trilogy. Thou hath been warned!

Last week I wrote about Endangered Species and how it set the tone for Messiah Trilogy and everything that follows. Now it’s time to get into the real meat of the Messiah Trilogy with the crossover event Messiah Complex.  Rereading this for probably the 100^th time, I can say this right off the bat—it still gets better with every read. Complex is simply one of the best stories to have come out in comics in years. Out of all the major events in the past ten years, I honestly hold Messiah Complex as the best. Does it have its faults? Of course. Every story no matter how well told will always have a few glitches, no matter how minor. But just looking at the entire Messiah saga, Complex has the strongest writing and the strongest art (Well, Messiah War has fantastic art, but it’s not exactly the same. Next week…next week). So before we get into the story and how it works in this trilogy as a whole—and the implications of some of the scenes/motifs—let’s look at this awesome creative team.

First off, did you see that list of writers? If that’s not a perfect group of writers, then I don’t know what is. Just going by these names, anyone who picks up this graphic novel should know that they’re in for a great read. Each writer is great—and more importantly, they’re consistent. Of course it’s important for a writer to stand out on their own, but in a crossover—especially one as big as Messiah Complex and the later Second Coming, consistency in style and tone is extremely important. It may be five writers, but the story should read one. The reader should not notice a change in writers, and the fact that Brubaker and company were able to do this not only proves how talented they are, but also show their ability to work with other great writers—knowing when to pick up traits or possibly give suggestions—and create a great story as one. In one of the two sequels to Messiah Complex, we’ll definitely see instances of one writer not wanting to play with the others because the abrupt shifts in characterization and tone scream at the reader (I’ll keep you guessing for now, but I’m sure most of you know which story I’m talking about).  I am all for individuality, and if you read all these writers’ respective books, you can get that. But seeing so many talented people working together is one of the biggest treats of the book.

X-Men: Endangered Species – Review

Written by Mike Carey, Christopher Yost, and Christos Gage

Penciled by Scot Eaton, Mark Bagely, Mike Perkins, Tom Grummett, and Andrea Divito

For the next four weeks, I’m going to give a closer look at the Messiah Trilogy that has consumed the X-Verse for the last three years. I know what you’re thinking: if it’s a trilogy, why are there going to be four posts? That doesn’t add up. Well, no, it might not, but there is a fourth story that I believe is crucial to the experience of these X-Men events. That Story is Endangered Species. It’s a depressing piece, filled with crushed hope and doomed times. All in all, it’s perfect.

The event that truly started all of this was House of M, written by Brian Michael Bendis. It’s a shame, really, because House of M changed so much of the X-Verse and nothing at all in the Avengers world, yet an the Avenger writer wrote the story that would alter the course of X-Men stories forever—or at least for a decade or more. House of M was a horribly written story that made very little sense with repercussions that didn’t add up (and this is coming from a Bendis fan). The Scarlet Witch casts a spell for “no more mutants.” Except most of the X-Men and their key villains keep their powers. Oh, and what was supposed to be 198 mutants left is clearly wrong as “undiscovered” mutants pop up everywhere. However, what the X-writers have done with the concept of an endangered species has been incredible—and future stories are very promising. These writers have carefully crafted a story (I will prove it to you) that has been developing since House of M and is still going on. The Avenger side of the Marvel Universe claim that the story of Siege was building for 10 years or so, but let’s be honest, it was from Civil War on.  The X-Men are on their 5^th year of being endangered.