Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

X-Men Legacy #251X-Men Legacy #251
Marvel Comics
Carey, Pham, Palmer, Yeung & Gracia

Part Two of the arc entitled, "Lost Legions" is a fast moving and interesting story. The team of Xavier, Magneto, Frenzy, Rogue, Gambit and Legion continue to round up the lost personalities that escaped from Legion. The issue is creative in both how the team deals with the personalities as well as which characters manage to succeed where the others fail. It's a good team book that also contains a good level of drama amongst the characters as Carey continues to push relationships forward in this title. Overall, I enjoyed the issue.

This issue focuses on the roundup of Chain and Susan in Sunshine, two complete opposite characters, but equally dangerous. Chain just takes over people's bodies and creates weapons out of them for his own army while Susan seems to be just a little kid that blasts energy at enemies. The team splits up to try to deal with them but the solutions couldn't be more different.

Magneto and Rogue try to stop Chain but ultimately fail because Chain begins to adapt his weapons so that they are not made of metal. Eventually they retreat to allow others to try to stop him. While this is happening Frenzy and Gambit run into Susan. This aspect of the issue is a little confusing because they seem to have their minds taken over and it's not entirely clear if it's Susan or another escaped personality that is doing it.

The relationships in this issue are almost as prevalent as the chasing down of the personalities. Rogue is caught in an emotional triangle with Gambit and Magneto and Frenzy uses this to her advantage because she is caught on the outside with her feelings for Cyclops. This sort of interloping love triangles is well crafted and provides a lot of drama in between the pages of action.

Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle ReviewsThe art is serviceable but that is not enough for this type of issue. Carey's issue is heavy on emotions and actions and reactions and the artwork does not push this across well enough. The collage of inkers may be the problem here but I struggle to find one panel that delivers the facial detail I feel is necessary for this type of story. I simply didn't find the art to match the story here.

X-Men Legacy is a sage of sorts. Sure, it's a Rogue book mostly, but the relationships that she is at the center of really make the series stand apart from the other X books. This issue shows how Carey can master the balance between the characters interactions of the daily drama while presenting an actual problem for the X-Men to deal with. I enjoyed this issue very much and am eager to see what other of Legion's personalities need to be dealt with in the future.

4 out of 5 Geek Goggles