A year has passed since Messiah Complex. The X-Men have left their Westchester home
to re-settle with a splash in San Francisco.
They’ve faced down Maddie and the Sisterhood, some revived Predators,
and both Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men.
Cyclops has sanctioned X-Force to, basically, kill. Mutant zombies have shown up and the X-Men
battled Selene. They got Kitty back and
Magneto has joined their ranks. Despite
victories, things have never seemed more dire.
The Mutant population is now below 190 and with no chance of
repopulation or growth.
And then Cable and Hope returned.
They show at the remains of the mansion and are immediately
attacked by the Right. Cable and Hope
take them down and go on the run.
Cyclops, now alerted to their presence, dispatches the X-Men and the New
Mutants into the field: Dominio and Vanisher are put into San Francisco; Namor
and Rogue remain at Utopia in case of an attack; the New Mutants are sent to
the mid-west to sit in a holding pattern; and Colossus, Wolverine, X-23,
Psylocke, Nightcrawler, Archangel, and Magik are sent to intercept Cable and
Hope. They track Cable and Hope down,
which leads to a battle with the Sapien League.
Cable and Hope go on the run as the X-Men take down the League. Nightcrawler finds out about X-Force during
this encounter and is horrified. Cyclops,
meantime, sends the New Mutants to Cameron Hodge’s facility in St. Louis.
The X-Men bump into Cable and Hope at a hotel, where yet another battle with the
Sapien League takes place. Cable and
Hope head back on the run again while the X-Men clean up the mess. The Purifiers, who are also there, use some
sort of sorcery to banish Magik to Limbo. Cyclops sends Ariel to them. Meanwhile,
the New Mutants take the fight to Hodge and his Right soldiers. They win and manage to defeat Hodge, but at
the cost of Karma’s leg and Warlock’s vow not to kill.
Rogue, after sensing some sort of connection with Hope, is
send out into the field with Nightcrawler.
They all converge a an abandoned trailer park, where yet another battle
takes place. Cable agrees to let Rogue
and Nightcrawler take Hope back to Utopia, as Bastian is tracking Cable by his
techno-organic virus. Unfortunately,
Ariel is targeted and killed.
Bastian himself enters the fray and fights Rogue pretty hardcore after injuring
Nightcrawler. He goes towards Hope, but
Nightcrawler interecepts – with Bastian’s arm ending up in his chest. With just an ounce of strength left, Nightcrawler
teleports Hope to Utopia, ripping Bastian in two. They arrive, but Kurt is dead.
The X-Men regroup.
Everyone but Dominio and Vanisher are recalled to Utopia and they take
some time to mourn Kurt. Beast arrives
to help out, but also to pin the blame on Scott. Cyclops is presented with information about
some mysterious towers by Cypher and he sends the X-Club out to
investigate. It’s also worth noting that
Donald Pierce has managed to escape capture, but Danger believes he’s still
there.
Cyclops sends Pixie, Anole, Dazzler, Northstar, Trance, and
Gambit into Limbo to retrieve Magik.
They discover that the dimension has fallen into chaos and N’stashi is
looking to become the new lord of Limbo.
Also, Gambit re-manifests his Death look.
Vanisher is then targeted and killed by Bastian’s
forces. Tensions rise at Utopia as a
fight breaks out between Dani and Hope.
Pierce then makes his move and destroys all of the X-Men’s jets. The X-Men take him down. Meanwhile, at the X-Club, while investigating
one of Bastian’s towers, it activates and they are sent to alternate reality
and then sent back just as it manifests an energy field. A force field cuts off San Francisco from the
rest of the world, encasing it in a big red sphere. The X-Men head out in the city to help the
citizens. Outside of the sphere, the
Avengers and the Fantastic Four both show up to help the X-Club collapse the
Sphere.
On the Golden Gate bridge, a time portal opens and several
Nimrods arrive. The battle that follows
is intense. Hellion loses both hands,
Iceman receives serious burns, and despite a victory, the X-Men are wounded. They discover that Bastian is bringing
Nimrods in from the future and that there are over a hundred thousand of them
waiting to come back.
With no other choice, Cyclops agrees to send Cable (who has
one final available time-jump), Wolverine, X-23, Domino, Archangel, and Cypher
into the future to stop them. Hope gets
pissed at Scott and even somehow manages to manifest his own power for a few seconds. He places Rogue in charge of protecting
her. He then asks Charles to release
Legion against the Nimrods. Magneto also
jumps into help.
Back in Limbo, Gambit has now influencing Dazzler and
Northstar and is looking to take over Limbo himself, kinda. N’stashi aslso convinces Pixie to kill Magik.
The battle continues at Utopia as Mutant refugees like
Random, Outlaw, Scalphunter, and Sack have to contend with the Nimrods
too. Colossus breaks his arm. Back in the future, X-Force is confronted by
two Master Molds – one producing Nimrods and clearly communicating with
Bastian; the other just sitting there.
Upon infiltrating the active one, X-Force is attacked by the dormant
one. Cable and Cypher get into the
active Master Mold and Cypher manages to sabotage it and destroy both Master
Molds and the Nimrods. Unfortunately the
time portal won’t allow organic material through.
The only way to get through the portal is for Cable to hold
it open by releasing his techn-organic virus.
As the X-Men recover from the immediate threat, Cable holds the portal
open so X-Force can return. And then –
the portal closes upon the dying Cable, killing him.
Bastian then arrives in full glory, engages the X-Men, and
collapses the bridge. Hope confronts him
and begins to manifest a myriad of powers, eventually leading into what appears
to be the beginnings of a Phoenix raptor.
Cyclops and Wolverine leap in and help deliver the killing blow to
Bastian. Hope blows apart the force
field, then collapses.
Pixie betrays the demons of Limbo and frees Magik, then
restores Gambit, Northstar, and Dazzler.
In the aftermath, the X-Men try and pick up the pieces of
their lives. Wolverine kicks X-23 out
into the real world. Cyclops shuts down
X-Force, though Wolverine decides to secretly reactivate it. There’s a memorial service for Cable, even
though Scott can’t through it and Hope ends up doing most of the talking. Emma begins to suspect something is up with
Hope, as she manifests a Phoenix raptor apparent to only her and says something
that Jean said during the whole Sisterhood story. She runs to Scott, who is ecstatic – five new
Mutant signals have just appeared on Cerebra.
I love rambling on in these things, don’t I? These crossovers are always so lengthy!
There’s a lot that I like about Second Coming. As far as crossovers go, this one is very
cohesive. The chapters interlock and
flow very nicely. The art fits together
and is very consistent (unlike certain other crossovers – I’m looking at you,
Utopia). The story is nicely paced and
the action sequences, as a whole, work really well.
Overall, it’s a decent story. It does a little utilitarian, sorta like, “we
need to bring Hope back, let’s do this crossover.” But hey, I’m all for a nice big crossover, so
I’m okay with rolling with it. There’s a
nice parallel to Messiah Complex, in that the Mutants were the major threat to
the X-Men and Hope in that story – and here, it’s the humans that are the major
threat.
I liked that everything from Messiah Complex onward comes
full circle here. I never would have thought that Pierce’s capture in Young
X-Men would have led to his involvement in Second Coming. Necrosha hammered in the fact that every
death matters, even guys like Meld. Even
the reign of Osborn set the X-Men up on their little island.
I’m not sold on the constant slaughter that is the X-Men
these days – including Kurt and Cable. Their
deaths are very effective and do make sense in the story, but . . . I
dunno. C’mon. Cable’s already back. Kurt will be right behind him, I’m sure. And both Vanisher and Ariel hardly get a
pause.
I guess what really sells this story are the small moments. Dani’s fight with Hope in the cafeteria, the
scenes between Cable and Hope, Hope’s adjustment to being in the present, Scott
and Hope fighting, the Kurt angst, etc etc.
Scott’s grabbing of Logan when Hope manifests the Phoenix raptor was
such a great, dramatic moment. Having
lost Jean, the two of them are all too aware of what that raptor means. It adds a personal layer to an already threatening
moment.
These are make this story credible and make it matter.
Scott’s faith in Hope is a nice driving force for him and
he, of course, is all in it. His dependence
on Logan; his tension with Hank; his faith in Cable and Hope; everything about
Scott in this story is great. I liked to
see his faith pay off at the end. And in
the way we follow Hope through her own emotional journey is very realistic.
Overall, I enjoyed this one.
It wasn’t anything amazing, but it was a solid piece of storytelling.
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