Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #12 (Final Issue) Review
The final issue of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man is out now. As the series comes to a close, I’ll give you my review of both the issue and how I thought the series was. So let’s get into what happened in Issue #12 of Miles Morales’ story.
The comic opens with the teacher noticing that three students, Miles, Katie, and Ganke, are missing and asks Judge if he had seen them. A sensible person would have sent the dorm guy to go check their room, but instead Judge is the one who has to do that and finds out the place has been trashed. Seriously, how did no one notice him being kidnapped if they made that much of a mess?
Meanwhile, Miles has been captured and hung up in a suspension cube by Doctor Doom. You see, he has a thing against Miles because he invaded Doom’s castle in a crossover with the All-New X-Men. Doom makes it clear he’s going to mine him for every biological secret he’s got and then make a bunch of super-Hydra agents. Miles explodes with a new power, gets free, and begins to curb-stomp everyone off-screen.
Judge, the ever-curious person, goes to Miles’ house to see that was also trashed and runs into Cloak and Dagger, who scare him until he explains that he was his friend and thinks something has happened to him. They decide to gather their remaining friends and Maria Hill to try and find Miles, receiving a notice about an explosion in a warehouse district. By the time they arrive, Miles and Jessica have mopped up everything.
Miles finds everyone safe and sound, breaks up with Katie by letting Dagger stab her (just knocked her out), and the comic ends with their planet about to smash into the 616-universe.
Okay, review time…
You can tell they rushed this with the whole Hydra subplot. Doom’s beef with Miles comes out of left-field if you didn’t read the All-New X-Men issues, we suddenly get him having either a new power or a souped-up Venom Blast unlike what he unleashed on Osborn, and the world is getting ready to end. You can tell they just wanted to get things into place so they can close the Ultimate Universe with Secret Wars after Ultimate End.
It was rushed, so I can’t give it more than a 3 out of 5.
As for the series as a whole, it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was the one series I never got completely jaded or frustrated with. I flat-out dropped All-New Ultimates and Uncanny X-Men because they were flawed through and through and I just couldn’t take it anymore. But asides from bringing Peter back from the dead and Jefferson’s flashback, this was a good series overall.
It gets a 5 out of 5.
Ultimate Spider-Man: Miles Morales #10 Review
Things seem to be going good for Miles so far, but will they last? Of course not! Read my review of Ultimate Spider-Man: Miles Morales #10 and find out…. Wait, did I do this intro before?
Anyway, the comic opens up with Maria Hill storming the warehouse where the Spider-Man copy-cats were, only to find it cleaned beyond belief. This naturally annoys her, but at least she takes it better than her Uncanny counterpart. On the other side of things, Miles’ father is at his school to get him going back there while he’s witnessing a fight between Sabertooth and Electro.
Miles is perfectly content to just fight the winner, but naturally fights end in a crapload of property damage and when a school bus is in the way he has to intervene. He’s got a point though; it’s always a school bus. Anyway, Cloak and Dagger show up to help out and he asks them for relationship advice. Like me, they asked why he would tell her his secret identity, but ultimately come to the conclusion that he needs to talk with her about it.
He then visits Ganke, who I wish I could un-see what he was doing. He tells him that Katie hasn’t been around so Miles goes to visit her place. Katie’s father welcomes him in, gives him a glass of water, and casually asks when he got his spider-powers. Miles should have known something was wrong the moment any father welcomed his daughter’s boyfriend with open arms, but he does state that she didn’t tell them about his secret as the comic ends.
Okay, review time…
Honestly, I guess Spider-sense don’t warn about poisons and drugs now or he ignored it because this dude got the drop on him. I bet it was Katie’s sister who told on him. Damn it, this is going to make the relationship awkward.
Still, 5 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #28 Review
The story picks up where it left off, with Cyclops offering to buy the man breakfast. Maybe it’s because he’s got some psychic potential and psychics seem to be willing to listen to him more, but Matthew goes willingly. Maria Hill is then panicking because Cyclops, who declared he wants to start a revolution, just got his hands on the current most powerful mutant there is.
Then we get a quick look at the JGS, where Beast is tripping over his furry self in stressing out about this new mutant and the world powers don’t care and blah, blah, blah. I’m not going to lie. As much as I figured I would love hearing the words ‘Cyclops was right’ or the equivalent from the sellouts there, they managed to ruin it because it feels hollow in the grand scheme of things here. It feels forced.
Anyway, Cyclops takes him up a steep plateau for some private time while Magik goes to fetch breakfast (yeah, like that’s going to happen) and he lets Matthew take a peek at his past with the professor. To sum it up, he fought for the professor’s idea and no matter how many times they save the world they were still hated on a genetic level for it. So the professor may have been wrong (which his psychic ghost residue mentions in this week’s Magneto) and they need to take their place.
Matthew then starts to flip out of control and so Cyclops shows him that a number of other mutants went through the same thing and they can help him. He still loses it and Magik pulls Cyclops out, but he won’t abandon him despite Magik telling him they need a plan. She then tells him he gets one more chance and if she doesn’t like what she sees then she’ll act on her own.
He goes back in and tells him that they’re going to help him, train him, and make him better. He doesn’t lie to him and admits that a mutant as powerful as he is will act as a deterrent for people like the Purifiers and while he’s willing to go as far as he needs to, with him they won’t have to. At this point, as the comic ends, Magneto pops up and tells him that he’s going just a bit too far.
Okay, review time.
Honestly, at this point I just want the arc to end. The only really good thing is that it gets to skip that even bigger nightmare AXIS, but other than the rehashing of Cyclops’ goals we really don’t learn much and the art was clunky…even more than usual. 3 out of 5.
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #7 Review
Okay, we’re entering the climax of the whole Norman Osborn and Peter Parker subplot. Read my review and recap of Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #7!
It starts with Osborn telling Miles he can tell him the secrets of his father if he listens to him, but Maria Hill tells him not to listen. Osborn then goes from a rant about how he and they are immortal, he would kill everyone to avenge what’s been done to him, someone is pulling their strings, and then state’s he’s their father again before transforming. So we can see that he grows progressively insane the longer he’s without shock treatment.
Peter and Miles jump into the fray once again with Maria Hill providing support fire to drive him off. Miles, unwilling to let him run and pull this crap again since he knows all of their secret identities, gives chase and brings him down to the ground, impressing all parties involved except Norman, who gets back up only to get put down again by both of them.
Maria Hill tells all of them to leave while she handles the police. Once they’re out of sight she puts three rounds into Osborn’s head, which JJJ did only to get killed for it afterwards. She takes it a step further and sets him on fire just to make sure he stays in hell this time and apparently that worked.
At the warehouse where Miles met with them before and received his web-shooters from Aunt May Peter gives them back to him and gives him his blessing before telling the others he’s going soul-searching to discover what he’s there for and who bought him back. In truth he’s leaving with MJ and going someplace far away. As the comic ends we see that Katie’s parents are Hydra and Miles’ father has returned to talk to him as the comic ends.
Okay, review time…
Good art, good story, but there are some times when I feel that they mixed up the panels and it got confusing. Also Fridge Horror kicks in here when you realize that Peter running off by himself will likely get him killed by Morlun’s family once Spider-Verse reaches here, unless it takes place before this but short of mass memory wipes that seems unlikely.
I give it a 4 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #27 Review
The next issue in the Will and Testament of Charles Xavier is out in Uncanny X-Men #27 and this is my review/recap!
Okay, continuing where we last left off Cyclops manages to get on-board the Helicarrier with Maria Hill not ordering his detainment to her bedroom since he’s come with the other X-Men. Right away we see where everyone stands on the topic of the coming of the God-Mutant, Cyclops and Storm want dialogue first, Wolverine wants to go the Snikt-List route, and Rachel decides to hit him with an illusion of Charles and the Avengers telling him to behave like he’s a naughty toddler.
To be fair to Rachel, it almost works. For like five panels. Then he asks why they’re trying to stop him from being what he’s supposed to be, and works towards the ‘might is right’ attitude. Then, once he learns that Charles Xavier is actually dead, he brings the Helicarrier down and teleports the X-Men to their individual schools in the process, stating he doesn’t blame them since they were being manipulated too by Charles. I’m assuming he knew the school’s locations and that Charles was dead by reading Rachel’s mind.
Cyclops has an anxiety attack as he lands in the snow and the Stepford Sisters calm him down and read his mind. Again, I question where’s that psychic protection he was supposed to have had when he first visited the JGS to recruit, but it doesn’t matter since Magik arrives and offers to take him back to the other X-Men, who are basically assembling all the heroes to take the new mutant down.
Cyclops has a different idea, one even the sisters think is crazy. He returns the site of the crash via Magikbus as Maria Hill is asking the guy to leave the planet and then talks to him, explaining that they have a lot in common, with both being former prodigies of Charles and have been manipulated by him, and that he’s a one of a kind blessing but the world may not be ready for him. He then offers to buy him breakfast to talk about things and he accepts as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Honestly, there were pages wasted here and this whole arc is negligible. You don’t introduce God-Tier characters without some criticism and I’ll be glad when it’s over, but at least they didn’t resolve things by trying to punch him out. Still, I’m have tempted to think that Cyclops earned his trust the same way he does virtually every psychic, invite them into his head, whisper sweet words of understanding, and then breakfast.
I give it a 3 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #26 Review
What will the X-Men do in the face of the last will and testament of Charles Xavier? Read my review of Uncanny #26 and find out..
The comic opens with Maria Hill having a moment where she realizes nothing is going right in her life. That tends to happen when someone wakes up with the Power of God and next to no control over it, which happens to be worse than a villain since they aren’t likely to end the world while still on it. The Avengers who can handle this are off-world, the Fantastic Four are nowhere to be seen, and she has to evacuate the state to prevent any more casualties. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile the X-Men fair little better with Cyclops wanting to leave and daddy Wolverine and mommy Storm are telling him to get on his big boy shorts while ultimately Emma Frost tells him to get in the damn plane. I’ll chalk it up to the fact that they don’t know Malloy is currently laying waste to South Carolina as the reason they’re taking their sweet time on the plane rather than using Magik to teleport them or the fact that they think those few alone will be able to handle this. Still, a Cerebro scan should have been done prior to take-off.
The only person who’s making a lick of sense is Firestar, the outsider, who’s more of a X-Men than her crush, Ice Kid. No, I did not misspell his name. Until he grows up from being a brat who tried to freeze the world over and gets off his high-horse, he’s just a prick. Even Wolverine wasn’t this bad at his worse when it came to his drama with Cyclops and that’s saying something. Those two could more or less work together when something tries to kill them or wipe out their species and go out of their way to save one another before a giant robot crushes them.
Maria Hill tries to get her Psi-division to do a long-range hack on the poor, world-ending bastard’s head, but he ends up giving them the mind-crush treatment. Oh well, that’s unfortunate for them. But she did learn that he’s a mutant, and that means it’s time to go see the X-Men about that and pawn the danger off.
And to round out the number of whiners in this issue we have Triage suddenly having a problem with attacking the Avengers in a training simulation despite having met them at least twice now. In the first place, you’re the healer. You’re not supposed to fight, you’re suppose to heal and try not to get shot first even though you can apparently heal yourself, Elixir-lite. Also, I call bullshit on Hijack being thirty; he’s twenty-five at best.
As the comic ends Beast says they really might not come back from this as Maria Hill catches up to the group.
Okay, review time….
Let’s be frank here, this issue could have cut out the pages with the kids arguing semantics and that double spread of Malloy so they could get to the meat of the story and have Rachel get to work on his brain or Maria Hill could try sniping the poor sod or something else before she needs to call in the X-men. They’re dragging this event out for some marketing scheme or other and it bores me to tears, which is a disappointment since I’ve grown tired of God characters who have just been introduced and lead to an escalation in the story that’s more than unnecessary.
I’m all for slow build-up, but get to the revolution already.
I can honestly say that if you skip it you won’t miss much, 2 out of 5.
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #5 Review
Okay, if you’re confused about why there are two Spider-Men and Green Goblin is back, you’re not alone. But, in my review of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #5 we cover the aftermath of the fiasco last issue.
Our comic begins with Peter, if that is him, and Miles being held up by the police. They have orders not to use their guns because it’s a residential area, but as soon as the two make a break for it Miles gets shot. Again, Spider-Sense should negate that risk but he has the excuse of having a weaker version that Peter. Still, it’s nothing lethal and, with Maria Hill’s help, both manage to get away.
Anyway, the two fake Spider-Men are brothers who look nothing like the originals, so they aren’t clones. One wants to capitalize on this to go cross another item off their list, but the other wants to play it safe. Whoever they’re working for doesn’t take disappointment well, so the reluctant one has to go along either way and they get dolled up for another robbery.
Maria Hill, in the meantime, helps Miles out because Peter Parker helped her out when she was a beat cop and then she got the collar for when he put down Kangaroo, so he pretty much made her career and she wants to help them both. At the same time, Green Goblin pays JJJ a visit in his penthouse apartment while the faux Spider-Men go rob an evidence room that holds super powered goodies.
Green Goblin, now Osborn again, paid JJJ a visit so he can go on record and give him an interview. It turns out that Miles’ Venom Blast managed to fry the crazy out of him for a time, making him more lucid and capable of remembering he killed his son. He believes that SHIELD, Roxxon, and Hydra are responsible and he needs to take power because those in power took everything from him. When he confirms he’s not done fighting, JJJ tries to put him out of his misery with a bullet, but considering how the last few times someone has done that hasn’t worked out that’s probably just a waste.
As the comic ends, Miles goes back to Queens while wearing a shirt over his uniform, which should bring up alarm bells either way, and goes to see MJ. He asks if Peter is there and she tries to send him away, but Peter then tells her to let him in so they can talk.
Okay, review time.
Well, this is sort a wind-down after that big battle the last time. While I would have loved to see how Katie Bishop, Jessica Drew, Aunt May, and Gwen Stacy took the news, we did learn why Maria Hill is so supportive of Miles. But seriously, I mean really, the one guy who shoots happens to land the shot on someone with Spider-Sense?
Unless Miles being injured later on makes it so that Peter has to die again to save him, it’s a waste. Anyway, 4 out of 5.
Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #3 Review
Well, after Miles did what may have been the dumbest thing I could think of at the moment, I can’t wait to pick up where we last left off. So here’s my thoughts and opinions as I review the third issue of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man.
The story starts out at the Daily Bugle where one of them is trying to pitch a story about Spider-Men when JJJ shuts him down, citing he doesn’t want any half-truths and that he wants the whole and real story. He does this while there’s a plaque of his old Spider-Man story claiming him to be a menace, which he lampshades and then states he wants a story about heroes being heroes or something he could use. Right on cue, he gets reports on Norman Osborn being alive.
At the police station some crazy guy dressed as Ms. Marvel is spouting about how the Earths are converging and will soon be one, which was the rumors going around last year about Cataclysm and the Ultimate Line ending, so touché Marvel. Maria Hill gets notice that one of the men the spider guys had beaten died in the ER, making it a murder. She then gets a note about Miles’ parents and sets off to find him.
Back with the idiot, by that I mean Miles this time, he just dropped the bombshell of his secret identity on his girlfriend and she bails out. Ganke gets on his ass about it, but before he can catch up to her Maria Hill just comes up and tells him to get in the car. He straight up runs and switches to invisible mode despite Ganke telling him not to, only to wait until she’s gone to uncloak himself. Then they learn that Osborn is alive and Miles goes to Aunt May’s house because that’s the first place he’ll visit and cause damage.
Speaking of Osborn, the FBI fucked up so they call in former SHIELD director Monica Chang and storm Osborn Industries to catch him. They find the man in his secret lair, dressed in a nice suit and haircut. He basically calls Monica a patsy, citing she’s just not as good as Nick Fury was, and then he sets her face on fire, kills the guards, crashes a helicopter on top of her, and blows the place up. Dick.
Miles finally makes it to Aunt May’s house, learning the hard way that having no web-shooters makes things far more difficult to travel. Thankfully Aunt May and Gwen aren’t around at the time. Not thankfully, Green Goblin shows up and it’s looking like we’re getting a repeat of the Death of Spider-Man as the comic ends.
Okay, review time…
Well, I loved this issue. The art was nice for the most part, not as crisp as before but still decent, and we have a redux of the most critical point of the last story while both a “Peter Parker” and Green Goblin are around. Here’s hoping that someone actually shows up to help, otherwise the death of a second Spider-Man by the same villain is going to look really bad.
5 out of 5!
Uncanny X-Men #22 Review
It’s time to bring the conflict between Bubblehead and both factions of the X-Men to a close as I give you my review of Uncanny X-Men #22!
The issue opens with Magneto bringing Dazzler to Triage, since Elixir is still missing. Emma and Magneto take a look at her and think that Mystique has gone too far, even compared to them at their worse. I can’t say since I wasn’t around for those times, but what matters is that Dazzler is healed and pissed off.
Meanwhile, in Westchester, the townspeople see what’s happening in the distance and figured it was only a matter of time before SHEILD came after the X-Men and decide to get out of the way. But not before Hijack lives up to his codename and hijacks someone’s car. The school is under attack and has to be abandoned while Maria Hill has to contact the Avengers and White House about this little screw up, as well as ordering Dazzler shot on sight for walking away with no proof she’s involved, which is illegal.
This is when their nuclear anti-mutant payload gets unleashed and they turn out to have even newer Sentinels. Yeah, good luck explaining that. See, you can’t trust SHIELD not to have weapons of genocide.
Anyway, before they all get wiped out, Hijack pulls a big damn heroes and stops the entire fleet from functioning. Although the sell-out was about to switch teams, I’m not question how he got to New York so quickly. What I am questioning is why his powers are working when we know for a fact that Bubblehead made the Blockbuster Sentinel immune to his powers before. I’m calling it an ass-pull, but it gets the job done as he has the Helicarrier open fire on the new killer robots.
The two teams gather as Cyclops and Beast go after the one responsible since his powers were being controlled by nanosentinels by Dark Beast… wait; didn’t Dark Beast get captured in the last issue of Astonishing X-Men, after Iceman froze a good part of the world over? I knew SHIELD couldn’t hold Mystique, but come on! And, as tempting as it is to assume that this is the cause of their broken powers, we all know that the nanosentinels don’t explain why Magik was forced into her dark-side form or why Colossus was screwy and the best Forge could whip up was some tech to keep him all metal, or Magneto, who could sense metal, not noticing.
Ass-pulls all around!
Anyway, the initial blast managed to damage his suit, killing him. But he left a bomb behind that Hijack takes care of. Thus the day is saved, minus the fact that Maria Hill will probably be fired considering that all of this happened on her watch, as Cyclops points out before Dazzler quits because Mystique managed to kidnap her on the Helicarrier and the X-Men were the ones who saved her.
Okay, review time.
Ummm, ass-pulls all around really take away from it all. Let’s be frank, I don’t care about Dark Beast being the one responsible because it’s a lighter ass-pull and… well, no one’s going to miss a version of Beast being dead.
But really, this cluster-fuck was manufactured to try and tie everything up in a neat little bow from the fact that Hijack was selling out to the other team and just so happen to be useful to having a familiar villain be killed off.
On one hand, it’s finally over. On the other, Mystique still got away and, while she lost her main source of MGH, she can always find some other mutant and hook them up to make more.
So… 3 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #21 Review
And we’ve reached a turning point in Uncanny X-Men #21 folks! Read this review for my thoughts on the matter!
The story picks up where it left off with Cyclops blasting the JGS staff as his powers run out of control until he passes out. Naturally things go from bad to worse as Magik goes Dark Childe and summons a dragon. Storm puts them both down with a bolt of lightning and the group needs to decide what to do with the two as Beast says he’ll handle it. Part of me was cheering that Beast may have been done in by the blast, but it was false hope. Maybe he’ll try to redeem himself by not being a douche-bag, but he doesn’t even get a chance as Mystique wearing Dazzler’s skin has come for the two of them with SHIELD backing her in Helicarriers.
Wait, back up a page. How the hell does Storm know that Magik has Limbo inside of her? She shouldn’t know that unless her daughter from the future told her, and I’d like to have seen that on-panel or at least an admission. And why the hell is Quentin in his bathrobes outside in the rain? Plot-holes!
Uh…anyway, back in Madripoor we have the Blob earning respect the only way you can in the place: kicking the shit out of everyone else in a bar brawl. Like he said, he was an original brotherhood member and he will be respected. But naturally his drug-gained powers fail and he needs his next fix, so like all junkies who know where the source of their drugs come from he goes to get some fresh from it.
He leads Magneto straight to Dazzler, who rightfully points out Mystique has made him a druggie and he should be ashamed. Magneto does not tolerate mutants being exploited for MGH and given the rampage he’s been on in his own series, the only reason Blob is still alive is because they’ve known each other so long. Magneto frees her and they both set out to go fuck up Mystique’s plans.
Back at the JGS it comes as no surprise Maria Hill is there and wants Cyclops. She’s got the hots for him and this is a chance she doesn’t want to pass on. But, since having something wrong with him could potentially back fire while in bed, she gives Beast an hour to see what the hell he can do to fix it, much to the shock of Mystique-Dazzler. They don’t have five minutes before Helmet Head, who I now suspect is a future student of Beast’s from his dialogue, takes control of their Helicarriers and open fire.
Beast, in another moment of shocking competence, tells Storm to take the battle head-on and keep the school intact while he figures out who is responsible by examining Cyclops and Magik. Man, getting chewed out by the Watcher did some damn good after all. Too bad he got shot. As for Maria Hill, SHIELD once more proves their incompetence as they explain they’ve been compromised (again) and Storm brings down the lightning on them.
We then have a brief cut to the NXS school, where the kids have been looking all over for Emma. Her daughters don’t even need to read her mind to know she’s worried and annoyed for Cyclops since he left without her, like you would expect from an ex-girlfriend who isn’t out to ruin your life because you broke up with her. This is a rarity, of course. She says she can feel something is wrong and just as she does something in the sky comes falling down towards them.
The JGS sends out a message for the students to get to the emergency bunker as Quire reads Maria’s head to try and figure out why they’re attacking and Mystique-Dazzler is just walking away. Meanwhile Beast still proves himself a douche-bag by talking trash to an unconscious man he’s known his entire mutant career, but he does say he knows who is responsible just as the Helmet Head tells him it’s time to show him who’s the smarter one as the comic ends.
Fucking teasers! Would it have killed them to just say the guy’s name in the last panel so people could rail about it! Stop dragging it out, Marvel!
Ahem… okay, review time.
The art was not to my liking but sadly was standard for this series, which is a damn shame considering how All-New X-Men is goddamn beautiful. Even worse is the fact that the pages are a jumbled mess to me as they cut away at the worst times. They couldn’t have done the NXS scene before the scene with Maria appearing?
The plot is moving, so there’s that, but I can’t give this more than a 3 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #20 Review
Okay, things escalated in the wake of the latest Sentinel attack and I’m giving you the highlights in this review of Uncanny X-Men #20.
We start again with David Bonds being interrogated by Maria Hill. She’s grilling him thoroughly, but he knows nothing. She only relents the moment she gets word about the fiasco in the last issue, where Cyclops had to deal with the fact that someone set them up. She ditches David like a bad date and ends up floating 1000 feet over Ohio to get to her real target.
Cyclops manages to get on board by using the triplets to have a little four-on-one chat inside her head, where she declares him under arrest and he blames SHIELD for the attack in Chicago. She claims SHIELD had nothing to do with that and tells him he can use the psychics he has to check her mind. He takes their offer and the Stepford Sisters spill that she doesn’t know who’s sending them, she’s afraid that if it is SHIELD then she can’t touch them, and that she has a crush on Cyclops. You can tell by that grin on his face he probably knew it already, but tells her than until they can prove that they aren’t at least partially responsible then they are at war.
In my opinion I believe that he just baited them into using their resources to fish out their mole. But more to the point, Maria Hill’s obsession with catching Cyclops makes so much sense now. She wants to take him and probably lock him in her bedroom. Well, we can’t blame her since that seems to be a thing going around now that he’s single.
Anyway, back in Madripoor we see that the Blob is still alive after Magneto dropped a building on him. He’s followed Mystique and Sabertooth to the source of the MGH but gets caught in the act. It’s made clear he’s addicted to the stuff and they task him with guarding Dazzler, which will probably bite them in the ass soon enough.
But Mystique has more pressing matters, like trying to get SHIELD and Cyclops to destroy each other. She does so by claiming Magneto was in Madripoor and that was where she was to follow his trail. Maria Hill ends up thinking that he may be trying to fan the flames, but either way you can’t hide giant robots forever.
Meanwhile David Bonds, after having the sanctity of his home violated, decides to go on the move while being unaware SHIELD is tailing him while Cyclops tries to work out how they’ve been led astray by someone hacking Cerebro. Since there are only a few mind intelligent enough to know it exists and how to hack it, all immediate signs point to Beast of the X-Men. The kids note that cutting off their search for new mutants means this is no longer a revolution, but a war.
At the JGSHL Magik and Cyclops immediately run into their old teammates. He makes it clear he wants to check Beast’s lab to absolve him of everything, but no sooner than he gets the words out Rachel Grey senses something psychically amiss just as Cyclops loses control of his power (yes, I laughed when he blasted Beast) and SHIELD issues order to go catch his ass since he lit up on satellite, ending the issue.
Okay, review time.
This issue moved the plot forward and had a few funny moments, but the art was lackluster once more which has sadly become the norm. Other than that I had little complaints other than the cliff-hanger. It gets a 4 out of 5.
Uncanny X-Men #19 Review
After the atrocity that was Issue #18, I admit I lost some faith in the series. Let’s see if I can’t get it back by reviewing Issue #19 of Uncanny X-Men, in which the war against SHIELD is declared anew.
Our story begins in Atlanta, after Cyclops has kicked Hijack off the team. It appears that a day has passed and Hijack slept off being given the boot, only to wake up and find Maria Hill and three SHIELD agents in his home while he’s in his Spider-Man undies. She tells him they have no reason to fight, not that she didn’t remove everyone else’s car in the neighborhood to be safe, and tells Hijack to give her all the information he has Cyclops or she’ll detain him forever, claiming that since he’s been cavorting with a known terrorist she’s allowed to hack his email…
In which the moron apparently wrote about how he was booted out to his girlfriend and was begging her to take him back. Leaving aside the fact that his girlfriend got him shot before, if you gotta get relationship advice from the person threatening to arrest you, you fucked up somewhere.
At the same time this is happening, Mystique and Sabertooth have Dazzler in some undisclosed location. Her eyes and ears are covered so she can’t hear or see anything, and Mystique makes it known that she considers Dazzler a traitor to her people. But, when asked why she doesn’t kill her and be done with it, she tells Sabertooth that Dazzler still has her uses.
Mystique has been using Dazzler as the source of Mutant Growth Hormone, you know that stuff that pissed off Magneto so he dropped her through a building? She, hypocritically, claims that Dazzler is a “sell-out dirty whore” for working with SHIELD and then goes about her way. The moment she’s out the door, Dazzler says “Ow” which, given the timing, indicates that she’s not only aware of what’s going on but she knows what Mystique is doing to her. Yeah, she’s going to be pissed off as hell once she gets free.
Maria Hill, after the above, is still harassing Hijack and claims that Cyclops knew they must have been watching his place and set this conversation up. Now, while I’d like to dismiss this notion outright, given what happened to Eva and Fabio when they visited home…I have to admit she’s got some logic there in that he had to of known that was going to happen. Since Cyclops didn’t have the Stepford Sisters give a mind wipe to him, the evidence looks damning to both me and Hijack.
Speaking of Cyclops, he’s watching Cerebro for new mutants as Eva arrives. He’s looking at the big picture, reminding himself what they’re fighting for. He then notes Eva has been different after the training mission and tells her that she can tell him anything, but she hesitates and uses the signal of a powerful mutant popping up as an escape to avoid the conversation, only looking on mournfully as he leaves.
The team arrives in Chicago, only for it to be a trap in the form of a big Sentinel that gives birth to a bunch of smaller ones. Magik, Fabio, and Cyclops’ mutant powers fail to work appropriately, leaving Cyclops to cause a boatload of property damage and Magik unable to teleport them to safety before they get caught in the enemy crossfire and there isn’t anything left in the spot, making it seem as though they were blasted to atoms.
However, they appear a minute later safe and sound. Eva sealed them in a Time Bubble and warped them all a minute forward to avoid the damage. Magik then shows the fruit of her training with Doctor Strange before he started playing super-cop and uses a defensive spell, an energy manipulation spell, and a spell to make some multi-headed dragon thing that chomped on the robots.
With that done, Cyclops congratulates Eva on a job well done and she smiles earnestly, but Celeste whispers to her she needs to tell him about what went down in her trip to the future. Before Cyclops can follow up and tear the biggest robot apart it runs away. They reason that whoever sent it rigged it to mess with mutant powers, but only those they knew about. I’m calling bullshit on this because there are only a handful of ways that works.
One is magic, in which case I expect those Sentinels to be magic-proof like that ass-pull in Battle of the Atom next time. Another is like what they did to Cyclops in the prison with the shock collars. In both cases they were general purpose, but the way they’re talking is that the person making them is tailoring them, and considering Eva’s powers still work it’s not something that suppresses the X-Gene completely.
Either way, the new students get their first taste of a hate mob and Cyclops is pissed off because this was some sick game and he’s tired of being hunted. He declares if it is SHIELD behind this they’re going to war, and if someone else was using SHIELD to do it and they didn’t care enough to put a stop to it, then more war. Basically, he’s decided SHIELD is the main enemy as the comic ends with dome-head watching from wherever he is.
Okay, review time.
Judging from how things are going, I’m just assuming they didn’t count #18 as canon, which I’m all for given the mess that it was. But the humor in this issue was rather crass and I can’t say the dialogue was anything revolutionary, in fact it felt like a step down from Issue #17, but the mediocre artwork is still miles ahead of what it was from the last issue and the plot is progressing.
3 out of 5 is my rating for this issue.
Twilit Dreams Circle 