X-Men #190

Written by Mike Carey

Pencils Cover by Chris Bachalo

 

Over here in X-Men we see the value a little bit of coherent story-telling can bring to a comic. Mike Carey is still only making a better version of the kinds of stories where a mysterious and random group of villains attacks the X-Men in their mansion. Hardly new, this kind of tale has been run through the X-Men books ad nauseam.

 

The small difference here is one of nuance, while never really making this story anything spectacular it nevertheless keeps the book entertaining. That nuance is the fact that the villains aren’t out for specific revenge against the X-Men or against mutants in general. A random group is attacking the X-Men in their mansion in an attempt to kill Sabertooth. Yes, we saw this same idea in Uncanny X-Men only a couple months back where the similarly under-developed Commando Death Squad (of the Shi’ar) attacked the X-Men in an attempt to kill Marvel Girl.

 

The mystery behind it all, at least at this point, is not dull outright so much as lacking depth. We know what they immediately want, that they’re secretive, aren’t mutants per se, and have varying superpowers. That’s hardly a lot to go on, and if we’re going to be expected to care then we’re going to need more, a lot more.

 

Bachalo’s art is better that the usual fare he produces. Like Medina, Bachalo has occasional problems that crop up from his unique and highly stylized art. Unlike Medina, he hasn’t really ever grown or matured as an artist to match that highly dynamic and wildly creative design with a solid, sound attention to clarity in actually telling the story. The entire sequence between Cannonball and the Beaubier twins is only good at telling me that something made Cannonball lose a brief fight and slam into the room the rest of the X-Men were in. Not very exciting when you have no idea what happens.

 

Luckily, someone had the bright idea to make Bachalo use white backgrounds for a lot of his work. This clears up a lot of the clutter that normally makes his art so confusing and makes the comic more dramatic in the process. He also has a large team of inkers behind him, and surprisingly, that actually seems to make his pencils look better.

 

The story goes that the evil group in question has freed both Northstar and Aurora and tricked them into attacking the X-Men in hopes of killing Sabertooth. The action, minus the aforementioned Cannonball scene, is pretty good—balancing the captions necessary to explain the events with some solid paneling that shows us said events. That’s the issue—the X-Men win because Cable shows up (the usual “non-variable” in the bad guy’s equation).

 

The cliffhanger promises only more of the same, fighting through proxies. It feels like early 90’s X-Men, fun but lifeless. There are some good, creative moments in the use of powers that play off our expectations of the established characters, so Carey can’t be accused of randomly making stuff up like Austen and others have done. Iceman’s new-found ability to become water vapor as well as ice not only makes sense but finally realizes the many, many hints/suggestions that he’s really more powerful than anyone knows.

 

This is mostly readable from both an art and story standpoint. It is certainly different than the other X-books and plenty fun. Add some more depth of character to the villains and this might actually be great.

 

Rating - 5