I feel like I might be overzealous in my praise of this series, but I'm really, really loving it. None of the small annoyances from the second volume are here; this one is back to high bar established by the introductory volume. Whedon’s run on X-Men makes me feel like the reckless fanboy I used to be when I first discovered the X-books during the Claremont years. This story arc begins with the faculty and students of Xavier’s school recovering from the hard-fought battles and somewhat pyrrhic victories over Ord and Danger, respectively. Cyclops continues with his seemingly endless inner struggle over whether he has what it takes to lead. Shadowcat tries to get used to the fact that Colossus is alive, and what that might mean for the two of them. Emma Frost, on the other hand, sets a long-dormant plan into motion, after the mysterious meeting with a new incarnation of the Hellfire Club at the end of the last volume. As each X-Man succumbs to their respective version of telepathic hell, the architect of and motive for the attack becomes horrifyingly clear. Meanwhile, in planetary orbit, Ord and Danger discover that they share a singular purpose, if for different reasons, and S.W.O.R.D. tries to locate and stop them before they make it to mansion to carry it out.
I devoured this volume. Admittedly, there isn’t a whole lot of deep character work going on until the very end, but there’s a pitch-perfect balance of action and melodrama that makes the collected issues eminently readable. Things are ridiculously convoluted in the way they should be in any good X-book, but the story arc comes together in a cool and elegant way at the end of the volume. And this bears repeating: Whedon’s take on Wolverine is hilariously dead-on. The panels that detail his thought processes are light on dialogue, but the art design and panel progression are marvelous, and had me chuckling every time.
The only complaint I can think of is a tiny one, and has to do with the art. Specifically, a few close-ups of Kitty’s face seem oddly proportioned in a way I can’t quite put my finger on, and I only noticed it because she looked like an entirely different person in those panels than she did throughout the rest of the book. Considering that the art up to this point has been expressive, attractive, and consistent, though, I’m willing to let that go.
Yup. More please. Maybe this isn’t the most objective review, but I went into this volume ready and willing to harp on something, and couldn’t really find anything worth complaining about. I’m a longtime X-Men fan, though, so keep that in mind. Even so, I can guarantee that anybody who likes the snappy repartee and black humor of Joss Whedon’s various other projects would do well to read these graphic novels, even if they don’t know a thing about the X-Men. This story arc does ramp up the inside baseball; I actually had to look up a villain that was a big deal in the series during the intervening years in which I didn’t read it. I still maintain, though, that these graphic novels are accessible enough to be a great starting point for getting into the X-books.
