Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
New Mutants #12
Marvel Comics
Wells & Roberson
The third chapter of the X-Men crossover Second Coming hits hard this week. The issue contains a lot of action and very little of what you might call plot development. However, the issue doesn't come off as filler by any stretch. In fact, the crossover is humming along quite nicely and there are aspects of this issue that I like more than the previous two issues of the crossover. That isn't to say this issue doesn't have its own minor problems with it, but for the most part this issue makes me want to read more of the crossover and possibly more work from this team after the crossover completes. That's probably all you can ask for and more at this point.
Essentially the issue is made of two battles. One continues the battle from the previous issue as the core X-Men attempt to extract Cable and Hope from the Purifiers. The other, has the new mutants attack Cameron Hodge's weapons factory. Both provide a lot of action in different ways.
The Cable and Hope portion of the battle has the X-Men getting taken out to some degree one at a time by Stryker's weapons. This was a good surprise as it realistically removed certain X-Men without cheap deaths. Eventually Cable and Hope abandon the X-Men and run. This idea that they continue to run without any sort of plan other than to stay off the radar may have gotten old. It just doesn't seem to make sense that Cable, with the entire X-Men force on his side, is driving down the street in a Jeep.
The second battle was the most interesting as it contained the regular cast of the book. The problem here is I count some six or seven characters, most of which, are never introduced or referred to by name, even in the recap. This was a poor decision as this crossover is most likely exposing this book to a wider audience. However, the battle itself is terrific. There is a moment where Hodge appears to transform himself into something out of John Carpenter's The Thing which was awesome. Also the battle makes a great showcase for many of these mutant's powers. I found the dialogue to be engaging and the action to be fresh.
The artwork was a nice compliment to the story. The comic book calls for a lot of action and we get some great art. The characters have a shinier, painted look to them rather than the usual bright, muscular super hero look. There is a lot of creativity with some of the weapon designs and I felt the display of some of the mutant's powers provided a very unique look to this issue.
The third installment is a good issue. It fails to introduce the main cast for this book but provides a very good action packed issue. I still question where this is all going and hope we aren't going to read fourteen issues where Cable and Hope are in a car driving away, but so far, so good. This is a good issue to pick up as a classic super hero comic book.
3.5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
