Last Friday, once I got through a nerve-wracking drive to work in the snow that had me (not for the first time) questioning my life choices, I took a break for a walk at mid-morning. I got about two steps out the back door before being reminded that the frozen precip the previous weekend never melted back there. Slipped on the ice beneath the fresh snow and got to test the structural integrity of the back of my skull against the ice. Results: inconclusive.
In the meantime, here it is: The last comic from 2024. A first issue, no less. Oooh-la-la. We'll start up the Year in Review posts next Monday.
Laura is not really settling into life after Krakoa. When she finds a place in the tree base the X-Men had in New York where people have been leaving letters asking for help, she decides to focus on that. So, that's the basic plot: have Laura try to help mutants now that there's no safe island nation. In this case, she's looking for a boy with the ability to give people different emotions, who was taken away from his sister.
Laura finds the boy, but also finds the ones controlling him are mutants, too, which really pisses her off. I had pictured her as too jaded to be surprised by the notion of mutants exploiting each other for personal gain. But I wasn't keeping track of what she got up to on Krakoa, so maybe she really bought into the notion of mutant solidarity and is angry to see that fall apart.
Angry enough she's just bulling ahead into everything like the Juggernaut. She gets torn up and tossed around a fair bit, because she's fighting stupid. She didn't make any attempt to figure out what she was up against, just charged in and started slashing. She accuses a mutant who created a small safe space for mutants in Dubai of doing so out of guilty conscience. Guilty over not moving to Krakoa? Probably worked out all right for her. Laura does apologize later, though the vague way Polly uses the term "benefactor" makes me think that's going to be a big reveal at some point. By the end of the issue Laura's pursing another letter right into a fight with Elektra.
It all makes it look like Laura's just trying to keep moving so she doesn't have to deal with what losing Krakoa meant to her. Keep busy, do concrete things like helping specific people. Don't think about the people she couldn't protect from ORCHIS. (I'm honestly afraid to ask about Gabby/Honey Badger/Scout's current status.)
Belviso's art reminds of Humberto Ramos'. Mostly in the elongated faces (especially the mouths), and the elongated and angular limbs. The people Belviso draws aren't nearly as oddly proportioned as Ramos' would get, but it has that same sort of feel. I'm not sure if that's a good thing; I was never a Ramos fan (going from Mark Buckingham to him on Peter Parker: Spider-Man gave me whiplash worse than cracking my head on the ice did.) But he clearly has his fans, and Belviso's can handle the quieter moments fine from what I saw here. I'm less sure about the action sequences, which could be a problem if Schultz is going to keep having Laura pick fights.
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