(I honestly don't have the issues with me right now -- I'll log them in a little later)
(also, my apologies for the delayed up-date: I've been out of town, plus had a heckuva time logging in here)
The long and short of it:
The X-Men (sans Rogue) has been teleported to the Odkit dimension, whose deities (beings called the Trion – I think they later show up in the “Avengers”) are under attack by a demon that has been taken control of the Juggernaut. In this new dimension, the X-Men’s powers act all wonky. Gambit accidentally injures Marrow. Storm becomes an avatar of the Trion. Professor X’s mind ends up stuck with Wolverine’s mind in Wolvie’s body, where start to understand each other.
The X-Men succeed or whatever and hope that their new little alien friend will teleport them back to where and when they belong. Unfortunately, their new little alien is pretty stupid and the X-Men end up in a simulated New York City (and back a few years), which has been built to serve as an infiltration training camp for the Skrulls, as they are pretending to super-heroes based on the media’s perception of said heroes. Gambit runs off to help Marrow while the other X-Men try and deal with Skrulls. Kitty encounters some Skrulls who are kicked outcasted from the camp because their ‘personas’ are dead.
The situation for the X-Men goes from bad to worse when Galactus shows up. All attempts made by Xavier to stop Galactus from eating the homeworld are ignored. Meanwhile, Marrow emerges from a magic healing magician looking all beautiful like. Gambit is stunned and hopes that by helping her, he was able to find some redemption for his actions involving the Mutant Massacre.
Meanwhile, Kitty makes nice-nice with the three outcasts and they help the X-Men get a hold of a ship. The X-Men take off, go into a stasis-field (which makes them sleep for a bunch of years) and show up at Earth just in time for Magneto’s attack. Unfortunately, the magnetic flare hits the ship and they go back into stasis-field for a few more days.
Professor X wakes up then and is all paranoid because he thought he sensed something or someone else in the ship during their previous sleep. The ship, too large to land at the mansion, makes for Muir Island. Once there, Colossus, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler go to pay some of their old pals a visit while the rest of the gang returns to the mansion. The Excalibur vets soon become embroiled in a problem with the Red Skull showing up and taking control Douglock and then taking control of the SHIELD helicarrier. With the help of Nick Fury, Machine Man (Aaron Stack – don’t call him, X-51, bitches), and the new Deathlok, they are able evacuate the SHIELD agents and free Douglock.
Okay.
Okay.
Here’s the deal. The stories aren’t too terrible. The art is rather good. But the big problem? These aren’t really the X-Men. The stories aren’t for the X-Men. They’re written like super-heroes stories for the likes of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, or even the Defenders. They’re a poor fit for the X-Men.
There are some nice highlights, including a very awesome series of sequences involving Galactus. I really find it just awesome when Skrull ships and Professor X doing everything humanly (and Mutantly possible – new word, haha) against Galactus and GALACTUS JUST STANDS THERE! The one panel that strikes me the most is when Galactus stands in the center of Skrull city with lava up to his chest and you know that he’s just loving it. The subsequent destruction of the world itself is rather awesome as well.
Another neat idea is that the Skrulls garner their ideas about the various super-heroes they haven’t interacted with (X-Men, Spider-Man, and others) from the media. It’s quite an interesting idea.
However, there are major issues I have with the handling of characters. Marrow suffers terribly from lack of proper characterization, as she suddenly makes a complete turn of character. Sure, she’s beautiful, but Sarah had deep issues with the concept of beauty and it seems like it’s all brushed to the side. She even says to Rogue upon their return “Yo girlfriend!” WHAT THE -- ?! She’s not Kitty Pryde, Mr. Davis.
The Gambit/Rogue drama suffers too as it starts to get redundant. Last we saw, Gambit was feeling too crappy about himself to want a relationship with Rogue while she’s the one that wants it. It kinda continues, though on less certain terms than during the Kelly/Seagle run.
These stories aren’t terrible. I’m not a huge fan of this era of the X-Men, but like I said, they’re an ill fit. I’ll admit it’s neat to see them deal with non-X-Men villains like the Trion, Skrulls, Galactus, and the Red Skull . . . but it just doesn’t fit well.
~W~
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