CREDIT: Marvel
Rating: 4/5 – This Battle of Genetically Altered Heroes Saved by the Art.
by ComicSpectrum reviewer Adam Brunell
Whether you were rooting for the Inhumans or X-Men, the battle has come to an end. For now. This spread out Marvel Comics event took two groups of genetically altered characters and pitted them against each other for one very good reason, survival. The Inhuman Terrigen mist was flooding across Earth and in the process it was saturating the atmosphere. If you didn’t already know, the mist activates dormant genes in some humans that have some kind of lineage with the Inhumans, but the mist is also a deadly poison to Mutants. Like usual, the X-Men are fighting for their very lives and the Inhumans are fighting for the survival of their people as well. One will die, and one will grow, and no one seems to be able to figure out a middle ground.
Writers Charles Soule and Jeff Lemire took a rather questionable Marvel Comics event premise, and created an interesting storyline. Artist Leinil Francis Yu brings captivating art panel after panel for this series, wide spread battle scenes and all. Everything is on par with what I thought a great event should look like, I just wished the story was as great as the art supplied for it. The six issue series that spread into every Inhuman and X-Men comic title was short lived but left many points open for debate. All the Mutants came together; they all agreed that they will not die without a fight. Oddly enough, Emma Frost brought everyone together after Scott Summers was killed. Back in the “Death of X” series, Emma made everyone believe that Scott was killed by Black Bolt, and she is using that as her motivation and fuel to start the fire. Her plan works out perfectly, mutants are ready to fight and a plan is set in place to neutralize the Inhumans and destroy the last of the Terrigen mist. The good news is, the Mutants had a great plan, but they didn’t take the Nuhumans into consideration. The war between the two comes to an end, but not without mass causalities. This entire event felt scattered and the confusing at times. If you were not on board, you didn’t miss much. Marvel has announced new X-Men titles to be released already, so that gives away that the Mutants don’t die out from the mist.
Friends turned on friends, new enemies and allies are made, kings and queens fall, and no one is truly happy in the end. This story died out for me about halfway through the event, with Marvel leaking new upcoming X-Men and Inhuman titles a little too early; it supplied readers with the outcome of this war. What readers couldn’t piece together till the end is just how far one powerful Mutant would go to make a point. This entire event seemed setup to use all too familiar situations for a new story; Multiple Man dying again and again, a telepath controlling everyone’s minds for their own ends, and a big battle where all common sense and reason is lost. I felt like this event could have come out to be much more, but ended up as just another event that seemed to drag on with a bunch of filler crossover and tie-in comics. That said, for fans of the X-Men and Inhumans franchises, there was still entertainment to be had in the art and some of the individual character moments.
Reviewed by: Adam Brunell
(adamb@comicspectrum.com)
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