What Happened: We begin this issue with a bunch of Californians wandering around in a trance repeating "I'm an X-Man". Before the seemingly hypnotised people wander off a cliff, they all wind up regaining their senses, with little memory as to what they were doing. Needless to say, Norman "Marvel" Osborn isn't exactly overjoyed to hear this news, since he feels his Dark X-Men are the only true X-Men, not a bunch of whacked out Californians. In order to both calm the public and discover what was going on, Osborn orders his Dark X-Men to head out to Cali and get to the bottom of this weirdness. The Dark X-Men, who consist of Dark Beast, Omega, Mimic and Mystique(who has morphed herself into Jean Grey!), fly out to California and head to the hospital where these formerly entranced people were being held for observation. The Dark X-Men visit one of the wanderers, and he claims to have no memory of what he was doing. Neither Mimic nor Omega believe the guy is a mutant, or their own powers would have activated. Before Mystique can begin to question the man, Dark Beast sprays him with a drug that puts the man in a trace and guarantees he'll answer any questions he's asked truthfully. Once the man is drugged, he suddenly recognizes the Dark X-Men and Omega begins to absorb vast powers from the guy. The amount of power Omega takes in is too much for him to contain, so he flies through the roof of the hospital and starts to run amok. Mimic begins to copy the ability of precognition from the formerly powerless man, and upon seeing a bleak vision of his own future, Mimic falls into a funk. Mystique orders Mimic to stop Omega before he kills anybody outside, but Mimic, now despondent refuses to go, so Dark Beast sprays Mimic with a drug cocktail that makes him extremely aggressive. The now half crazed Mimic chases after the drunk with power Omega and the two begin to tear into each other, as well as the area around the hospital. While Dark Beast and Mystique argue over what to do about the other two members of the team, as well as the guy in the bed who caused the mess, massive amounts of energy begins to seep out of the man, taking a humanoid form. The energy figure immediately recognizes Dark Beast from "home", as well as Mystique, who it refers to as "mother". Mystique is clueless as to what's going on, but Dark Beast slowly begins to figure out the identity of the energy being, and he is none too pleased. This issue ends with the energy being managing to pull itself together, turning out to be the greatest character in the history of comic books, Nate Grey!!!
What I Thought: Ahhhhhhhhhhhh... That is the sound of me being completely and totally satisfied. Where do I even begin? I guess with the obvious. I am THE biggest X-Man(Nate Grey)fan on the face of this(or any other)planet. It's true. I proudly own every single comic book, trading card, action figure and video game that has ever featured Nate. Going in to this comic, I knew Nate was going to return, it wasn't exactly a state secret, but actually getting to see/read Nate's return with my own two eyes was an almost indescribable experience. I can honestly say that I am now at peace. Now, with my fanboy gushing over with(for now), I should probably say something about the actual story in this comic. The story was very good. It made sense, Paul took some time to give the readers a quick overview of who these Dark X-Men are, and there wasn't anything here that I can point at and say, "I didn't like that". Likewise, the art was very well done. I still don't care for Mimic and Omega, but I have always been a fan of Mystique, and a very big fan of Dark Beast, so for me, the team balances out nicely. Now, this is usually the part of the review where I post my score. Being purely impartial, I'd probably score this comic around an 8. However, I'm not an impartial person. And since I'm NOT impartial, and this is my blog, to do with what I please, I'm going to score this comic a tad bit higher then an 8...
Score: 10 out of 10! Come on, that score really shouldn't surprise anyone!
No, I'm an X-Man!
Hm...do I predict someone being biased? Lol
ReplyDeleteWhat would make you say that? ;)
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, X-Man. I hope the return of your character is adequately explained in the rest of the mini-series, and that he beats the Dark X-men to a pulp.
ReplyDeleteAs for your excitement, that is how I'll feel when G'Nort finally returns to save the day in Blackest Night!
Now that Nate's back, I'm just hoping Marvel doesn't do something really stupid, like kill him off again! As of right now though, all is right with the world of comic books for me.
ReplyDeleteG'Nort?!? Wow Kello, and I thought I was into obscure, c-list characters!