The temperature started dropping like a rock midday Friday and didn't stop until Sunday morning. Went from mid-70s to mid-20s. As long as there's no ice, I'm fine with it. Meanwhile, we've got two X-Books to review.
Contrary to the first two issues, over half of this issue is spent in Kamala's dreams, as she and her fanfic Silver Surfer/Dr. Strange mash-up travel through her mind, trying to sort out her identity issues. Whoever draws the dream sequences makes Kamala look a closer to how she did when Adrian Alphona was illustrating her adventures. Kind of gangly-limbed even without her powers, alternately drawn in on herself and uninhibited (scarfing down popcorn while watching one of her memories with Dr. Surfer.)
Meanwhile, ORCHIS' little bug thing has injected something that, if Kamala unwittingly accepts it, will attack the minds of every telepath she communicates with. The virus appears before Kamala, pretending to be her X-gene that never activated, offering her the chance to feel fully accepted by the X-Men because she'll be a "real" mutant now. It would seem ridiculous for ORCHIS to think that was going to work, if the X-writers hadn't spent the entire Krakoa era with the X-Men touting Magento's "mutant supremacist" horseshit. Also if ORCHIS wasn't employing a bunch of morons who take the zero-sum approach to human & mutant relations.
Either way, Kamala finally recognizes she won't be defined by any one aspect of herself, biological or otherwise, and wakes up. To find a Sentinel outside her window, because she does register as a mutant now. Although the color scheme seems like the classic purple Sentinel, and I thought they were all rocking the red-and-gold Stark paint job now, so I can't rule out this still being some sort of hallucination. But the art style shifted back to what it is when she's awake, so I assume this is the point where she manifests the energy powers they gave her in the TV show.
There's a point where Bruno's hacking of the little drone allows ORCHIS to figure out which dorm building Kamala's in and send drones to look for facial recognition. Which Bruno beats by slapping Kamala's floppy-eared winter hat on her head and a facial mask over her mouth. The drone concludes this student matches no one in their records. But Bruno comments the X-Men must have some serious tech to fool facial recognition software.
I know the X-Men did do something similar to that, but I'm pretty sure it turned out face masks were great for fooling facial recognition software when the cops were trying to arrest people after the fact for protesting the cops being authoritarian, jackbooted thugs. But Bruno didn't know about that, or why disguise her? And since he did, why assume that wasn't what did the trick?
Most of this issue is Silver Sable flirting (or openly lusting after, if you prefer) Nightcrawler. There's a little bit at the beginning where he's trying to talk to Mystique, except she doesn't recognize him. Oh, and the details of his birth are going to change. Again. I know, right? Kurt's origin gets shifted around more than Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's. ORCHIS sends Rhino, controlled by the same doohickus they used to make Kurt kill people, after Kurt.
I would have been curious to see how Nightcrawler handled that sort of challenge on his own, but Silver Sable's group bust in and briefly capture him. The control thing is messed up and hurting Rhino, so he goes berserk and Kurt escapes into the sewers, bringing Sable with him. Who acts extremely unprofessional, unable to stop openly making comments about how attractive she thinks Kurt is.
That's one of her two settings in this issue, the other being condescending.Spurrier writes her a lot like he wrote Elsa Bloodstone in that Black Knight mini-series, but hornier. It just seems silly. Let one of Silver's subordinates be the one openly ogling and being reprimanded for it. Silver Sable's supposed to be professional, but with enough of a core of decency she ends up doing unprofitable things sometimes anyway.
Either way, Nightcrawler escapes to spend another day arguing with little Bamf ghosts and keeping all his problems bottled up.
No comments:
Post a Comment