The downside to a week spent in the field was my allergies went berserk. I wore sunglasses most of the time just to obscure my bloodshot eyes. I knew it was gonna happen, I just always underestimate how annoying it is. On the positive, I didn't find anybody screwing things up badly. And, a comic shop in the town I was staying had the one book I wanted this week, plus one from earlier in the month.
Desperate for information on Black Spectre, Marc turns to the creepy guy with the mind-controlling sweat MacKay introduced back at the beginning of this series. Hawley's in a coma, but if Marc and Badr drink the sweat (yuck) and inject it into Vibro's IV drip, they can get in Vibro's mind. That is a hilariously ridiculous plan, though MacKay does address the notion of why Marc doesn't get some super-powered help by mentioning Clea's at her mother's wedding in Antarctica. And, you know, the mutants have all the telepaths and they got their own problems.
The rest of the issue is those two in Vibro's mind. They find a seemingly ordinary geologist named Alton there, too, and Jake and Steven chat with him while the Fists fight a bunch of Vibros. Eventually Badr figures out Alton is who Vibro was before the accident that gave him powers, and Marc convinces Alton to tell them Black Spectre's plan, while Hunter's Moon buys them time by fighting an army of Vibros with an army of all the past Fists stored in his head. Which seems like it would only weaken the line between him and them even further, but desperate times.
That's basically it. I think the book is being canceled and rebooted at issue 30, but this really feels like it was drawn out to help stretch the story. Vibro's mindscape is rendered as a rather dull plain with some rock spires or stalagmites here and there, all drenched in red. Other than there being a lot of them, the Vibros don't really take advantage of what is theoretically home court. I could rationalize that Black Spectre's done something to Vibro to make him so devoted, and that plus the coma, have removed a lot of the depth from his mind. But if this - Moon Knight and Hunter's Moon diving into a super-criminal's mind for answers - is what you devote the entire issue to, it could be a little more visually interesting.
Nightcrawler's living in New York, wearing a Spider-Man costume Peter loaned him (and which Kurt has somehow modified to accommodate his unique morphology), fighting random crime and sleeping in a church steeple. What looks like one of those "bamfs", the mini-Nightcrawlers, is hanging around as some invisible voice, whispering stuff. Mystique is living in Central Park, seemingly muddled in the head. The Vulture is working for ORCHIS, and mucking around with the techno-organic virus from the Phalanx, it looks like.
I know all comic book scientists are multi-disciplinary geniuses, but there had to be someone better suited than the Vulture, who's into aerodynamics and magnetic lift or however his outfit worked. Whatever, ORCHIS seemingly has nothing ready to hunt Nightcrawler, so they hired Silver Sable. Or at least, Silver Sable has come to New York to find Nightcrawler, and either capture or sleep with him. Or one, then the other.
Questions about how Kurt got the costume to fit aside, and ignoring that the chest logo reminds me of Knull, I like the look. Red and black work well together, it isn't an overly complicated design, Garbett minimizes how much the ears stick out compared to what Tony Daniel does on the cover. Overall, it works for me.
The story aspects, I don't know. The X-Office threw in the whole thing where ORCHIS threatened to kill ten humans for every mutant they saw running around, then has to contrive reasons why they don't carry out this threat - which would likely turn a lot of even dumbshit Marvel Earth against them - when mutants like Kurt (who they're 97% certain it's him) or Iceman or Kamala Khan are visibly running around.
Spurrier wings it that ORCHIS thinks Nightcrawler is more likely to disappear than surrender himself. And the way Spurrier's writing this, maybe that's accurate, as his Kurt seems mentally exhausted. He apparently told Spider-Man he wanted to help mutants and clear his name, but it seems more likely he simply can't muster the energy to think about anything like that. The best he can do is save a person her or there, eat pizza, ogle women out jogging in the park. Peter Parker used Spider-Man as a way to let out the personality he couldn't show as old Puny Parker. Nightcrawler's using it as an escape. Play a role, avoid thinking about his problems.
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