REVIEW: X-Men Second Coming ø3

Installment three of the epic X-Men: Second Coming crossover was right on time yesterday.  This was a book that felt like nothing happened when I finished reading it, but as I started writing this I realized that a whole lot happened. I must have been in shock, spoilers to follow.

Zeb Wells’ first contribution to Second Coming focuses primarily on his titular New Mutants team who are launching a strike on Cameron Hodge’s army, The Right, in the heart of their base of operation. During the course of the battle Sunspot questions the wisdom of their attack, Hodge reverts his ridiculous old Phalanx spider body, and Karma is grieviously injured. Wells has a great handle on these characters and really sets up the internal conflicts among the team well.

The attack on The Right’s headquarters is being staged in part to keep reinforcements from reaching the X-Men, Cable and Hope. It’s a good thing too, since the X-Men are beset by William Stryker’s Purifiers who are fully prepared to face them. Targeting the “White Devil” and “Blue Devil” to take out the teleporters Magik and Nightcrawler respectively, the X-Men’s escape route is cut off. Magik is dragged into Limbo in the process and this clearly sets up the epically titled X-Men: Second Coming Revelations – Hellbound miniseries.

The fact that the Purifiers were able to track them so quickly has Cable thinking that Bastion might have a man inside the X-Men that’s tipping off his and Hope’s location…that’s just tragic and likely to lead to something really bad (like Cable sacrificing himself) when he realizes that he is the way their enemies are finding them by tracking the techno-organic virus that infected him as an infant and is also the basis of Bastion’s technology. Despite Karma’s injuries, I’m really feeling that Cable’s going to be one of the characters that doesn’t make it out of the crossover.

I wasn’t sure about artist Ibraim Roberson going in, but he did a fine job. His style on the book reminded me of Mike Choi whose work will appear in the X-Force issues of Second Coming, bringing a bit of artistic cohesion to the crossover. The scene of Cable and Hope running from the X-Men is particularly well put together. He even made the Hodge-spider look decent.

Again covers are provided by Adi Granov and David Finch, but this week I think I prefer the Finch version. We don’t often see a cover like that featuring these characters, and the Granov one just makes me think of how much weight I’ve gained in recent years.

Overall, I’m giving this a solid three. It moves things along nicely, but it’s clearly part 3 of 14.  There are high spots to come and I’m going to need room on the scale.

More on X-Men: Second Coming
Chapter ø2 / Chapter ø4