Filed under: Hellbound, New Mutants, Second Coming, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men: Legacy
Well the Second Coming is here and halfway over and I must say that this storyline is fantastic. This is exactly what the X-Verse needed to get itself back in the game. With story archs like Utopia, Nation X, and even Necrosha, the X-Men have faded into the background to let comics, like the Avengers, take the mainstage–WTF!? However, salvation is here in more ways than one–Introducing the teenaged messiah of all us X-Freaks, Hope Summers. Back from the future, Hope and everyone’s favorite cyborg, Cable, have returned to our time period (shaking off the Bitch of a Mutant, Bishop) to put an end to this whole cat-n-mouse chase. However, when they return they are not met with the promise that they thought they would. The mansion is in rubble (if we can remember back to the times when the X-Men still worked out of Westchester) and Cable doesn’t now what to do. Fight or flight leads the pair to a motel where they find an old Newspaper that says the X-Men are now working out of San Fran. In hopes to find their friends and family, the pair are ambushed by Bastion and his groups of anti-mutant fanatics causing the pair to go off map, causing the X-Men to even have difficulties finding them.
Cyclops breaks the X-Men into two groups Alpha and Beta (Alpha being a mix of Uncanny and X-Force and Beta being the New Mutants). He sends Alpha to find Cable and Hope while Beta is sent on the task of putting a stop to Cameron Hodge’s slowly growing army of smiley face bots. The Alpha team falls short of a victory, losing Magik to some interdimensional rift (which archs us into Hellbound, a subserious happening at the same time as Second Coming) and loses sight of our time jumpers. Meanwhile, Beta team, while more successful in their ploy, take heavy damage; Karma loses are leg to the cyborg Hodge/Spider thing while Cypher tells Warlock to go back on his promise of not taking a human life. Luckily for the New Mutants, Warlock uses his TO virus to save the say and sucks all the life out of Hodge and his followers.
Cyclops now understand that Bastion is trying to set up the X-Men by taking out all of their strategical advantages, such as teleporters and communication via telepaths. Cyclops rounds up a team to send to Limbo to rescue Magik (Cannonball, Pixie, Anole, Trance, Gambit, Dazzler, and Northstar) while he calls back Beta team after the damage they took to their team. Meanwhile, Cyclops assigns Ariel as teleporter for the X-Men’s Alpha team (I included the link to her Wiki page, since the majority of you probably don’t know who she is, minus her small appearance in Utopia) and sends them out to find Cable and Hope. In their attempts to find them, the team is gunned down by a helicopter and Ariel is killed in the explosion.
Meanwhile, Rogue and Nightcrawler port like crazy trying to get to Hope and Cable. They are successful as meeting up with the pair, but are attacked by Bastion himself. Rogue, having suped up with all the Alpha teams powers, takes on Bastion while Nightcrawler attempts to get the trio out of the line of fire. Rogue gets her ass handed to her due to Bastions regenerative abilities and is seconds away from killing Hope when Nightcrawler, in one final porting attempt saves the pair, but in doing so is slain by Bastion. RIP Elf, we will miss you (guess Cyclops never has to explain to you about X-Force though, phew… oh yeah, X-Force isn’t a secret anymore).
Hope is now back on Utopia, but it seems that not everyone is as excited to see her. Dani Moonstar and Wolverine are among the group that aren’t so sure about all this risk for one girl, Dani even getting into a fist fight with the Messiah. However, not even Utopia is safe from Bastion’s plans, for the mutant hating Cyborg Peirce is sitting dangerously unknown to the X-Men in their containment brig. Danger is made to believe that Donald Pierce’s presence is still there thanks to the TO virus Bastion has infected all his hosts with and allows Pierce to blow up the the area with the Blackbird and all the X-Men’s means of transportation. He has stranded them on their island, making them sitting ducks.
However, something far worse is happening–a huge impenetrable red sphere engulfs the entire San Francisco area, locking all the mutant population within it. Also, a rift in the space-time continium has opened up in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge and it leaking in sentinels from the Future. The X-Men, seemingly trapped with their lives at stake, send all they can into the front to stop the onslaught from the Nimrod Sentinels while X-Force is sent into the future (with Cable and Cypher) to combat at the source of the problem–however, there is a catch. To go to the future Cable must use his armtech to jump them there though he only has one jump left. It is ultimately a suicide mission that Cyclops and all the X-Men know is completely necessary.
Saying their goodbyes, the team ports into the future where they see that all the X-Men have been eliminated and a huge “wanted” board is decked out with posters of ever mutant. The team quickly gets to work, however, it seems that their task might be impossible for an infinite line of Nimrod Sentinels awaits the jump into their timeline. Their plan is to use Douglas’ abilities of language and communication to tell the source of these robots to end this, though how they plan on accomplishing this is still up in the air.
Back at home, the team has taken some damage and are not able to continue at this pace, it seems that the X-Men might face some more causalities in the near future for their is little that they can do to fight the onslaught of Nimrods.
I am in love with this serious, so much is happening and absolutely everyone is being used or at least mentioned–even the Avengers and Fantastic Four are out there trying to help out the struggling race. Also something that is really interesting in this plot line is all the story lines that are going along with it (Hellbound, Blind Science, and X-Factor). This literally is affecting every single mutant on the planet and it will only stop if every mutant, evil or good, comes together and stops this. I love it. I can’t wait to see what Hope has in store in this plot line because as of now she has had very little
impact, other than being the catalysis to all the pandimonium. Slowly but surely we are seeing that Hope’s powers are a lot like Rogue’s, though I’m not sure if they work like hers. She seems to have more like Prodigy’s powers.
Filed under: X-Factor | Tags: 200, Fantastic Four, Invisible Woman, M, Madrox, Multiple Man, Shatterstar, Siryn, Strong Guy, The Thing, X-Factor
X-Factor #200
So our super powered Investigators have moved out to New York again to take advantage of a larger superpowered populace. However, not all of our PIs have embarked on this little journey–Madrox (AKA Multiple Man) and Terry (AKA Siryn) have gone their separate ways after their last encounter, which is probably smart cause Terry promised to break Jamie’s neck if she saw him again, and this Irish beauty is a lady of her word. However, apparently finding a base of operation seemed to be difficult for Madrox because the new X-Factor is currently running out of an abandoned funeral home, morgue and hearse included! Everyone quick, to the X-Hearse!
So the New York investigators include our doppelganger leader Jamie Madrox (AKA Multiple Man), super strong tank Guido Carosella (AKA Strong Guy), adaptive powered Armando Muñoz (AKA Darwin), genetically engineered mutant Gaveedra-Seven/Benjamin Russel (AKA Shatterstar), depowered earthshaker Julio Esteban “Ric” Richter (AKA Rictor), and probability manipulator Longshot while Monet St. Croix (AKA M) and Terry Cassidy (AKA Siryn) have stayed back in Detroit, however it is later revealed that Terry closed down her office of investigation.
The issue opens up with two shady characters burying the body of some unknown victim. Having a little banter among the two, the one gravedigger is quickly dematerialized after the body is buried and we come to find out the man who is behind this is none other than Reed Richards, Mr Fantastic! Or at least it appears to him. What is America’s superhero celebrity doing burying bodies?
Well we quickly learn from his two children, Valeria and Franklin Richards, that The Invisible Woman has gone missing and their father is acting casual about the disappearance of their mother. The super-powered geniuses finally get the assistance of Madrox and the crew after a few puns about the disappearance of the Invisible Woman.
Also as a side note, a few cute panels are dedicated to Rictor and Shatterstar sitting around watching a movie together. I love their relationship, and I also love how the writers aren’t afraid of making them real about it too. Guido’s banter, Madrox’s statement, “Who didn’t know about Rictor and Shatterstar”, and just the general feel the two of them have for each other. I’m a supporter of this as a positive image of gays in comics. Score one for X-Queers!
Anywho, also as a side note, what the hell is Terry doing!? Sleeping with Deadpool… Not only is that disgusting but… what the hell, random? While we never see the Merc with a Mouth in any of the panels his costume is strewed across what appears to be Terry’s apartment floor and his characteristic yellow speech bubbles are everywhere with typical Wade Wilson craziness. Oh jeez… what are you doing with your life Siryn?
Well, as the Madrox, Strong Guy, and Shatterstar make their way with the Fantastic kids to confront Mr. Fantastic about the disappearance of his wife, a Madox dupe and Rictor head around the Fantastic Four base to find some clues to what might have happened to Susan. To maintain Rictor and the dupes secrecy, Guido starts a fight with the thing to buy the pair some time to snoop. However, Valeria is quick to catch onto what Madrox plan was, which gives Madrox the feeling that Reed Richards too picked up on the crews plan–however, Mr. Fantastic didn’t do anything to stop them. Something is up.
Meanwhile, back at the base, Monet comes back to try to get Madrox to accompany her to Ireland and talk to Terry who is becoming more and more distant but is quick to judge the funeral home/base and finds a presumably dead Longshot in the morgue. However, it appears that in a drunken stupor the luck manipulator had fallen asleep inside one of the body compartments. However Val Cooper comes to deliver some bad news to M, telling her that her father has been captured by terrorists with plans to behead him on TV. Their only comprise, is M in exchange for her father.
Best line of the entire issue though is when Madrox returns to headquarters to stumble upon M and Val in the middle of discussing what they are going to do about her father: “And… Val…? Are you two together? Not… in the romantic sense, I mean, but…” Love the gayos (gay + chaos).
M asking for some space, gives the crew a chance to piece over the clues they found over at the Richards facility. A single bobbypin that was found in the Fantasticar (lamest name ever) leads to Longshot using his abilities of psychometry to view what happened to the Invisible Woman. This leads him to following Susan through some sort of portal that brings him face to face with what appears to be a cloaked Layla Miller who states she is in Latveria–nation ruled by Doctor Doom.
The story then crosses over to Ireland where Terry is standing before her father’s grave (wonder if this is going to have any relavance or noting in Necrosha sense papa Cassidy is out and about being all TO zombified) rather confused about her life. Madrox then appears behind her and asks if she could us some help, which leads her to clobbering him across the face. However, we quickly find out that this is the dupe of Madrox that is a priest. The pair follow the sound of a gunshot which leads to a pair of idiotic hunters who accidentally kill a baby deer. This leans Siryn to use her powers and scare away the hunters while she laments over her past on the shoulders of the dupe of Madrox.
Rating: 4/5 art is nice, story is looking good, heading in the right direction
X-Factor: A New Beginning
X-Factor has been a rather long running arch, but has relatively little spotlight. Whether this is writer Peter David’s plan or not, X-Factor has been sort of a comic that die-hard X-Men readers follow. Unfortunately I did not start reading this comic when it began back in 2005, however I am up to date (for the most part) on it’s storyline and I, for the most part, enjoy this series. To be honest, I began at issue number #45 when I heard all the hubbub about Shatterstar’s and Rictor’s kiss (which I must add, made me very happy). However, other then their controversial kiss and story material, this series proves to be worthwhile and should be more open for the general public.
Since X-Factor doesn’t deal with the major arching X-Men plot line, many X-Men readers stay away from it thinking that it won’t effect the major plot line. But with members like Rictor, Shatterstar, Darwin, and Layla Miller (and our recent discovery of her true power), the arch is going to become much more popular I believe, also with the jump to the number 200 coming up this week is going to be even more exciting to watch our group of Private Investigators work together in the aftermath of all that Cortex and time travel business. Also I think it’ll be interesting having a Fantastic Four/X-Factor crossover (though I’m not typically a Fantastic Four fan, I do enjoy Franklin Richards).
Also a little interesting one-shot is happening soon with a little Nation X crossover with Cyclops trying to get the PI squad to run out from Utopia. Though I highly doubt that Madrox will agree to this, it will be nice to see some interaction between the two X-Casts sense they typically don’t see each other much. I mean when’s the last time Domino has seen her buddies Longshot or Shatterstar, and isn’t there tension between Professor X and his old student Darwin? Anywho, there is a lot of hype for this comic, and I highly recommend it now more then ever for people to jump on this bandwagon since the arch is somewhat starting fresh with its adoption of issue number 200.
