Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

X-Men Legacy #222
Marvel Comics
Carey, Eaton, Hennessy & Reber

The middle issue of the five part arc has a lot of explanations in it. This isn’t a bad thing but it does make the issue feel like the slowdown right before the big ending. Not really knowing much about the Shi’Ar salvage crew may be hurting my full interest in the characters. I’m not sure I quite understand all the ins and outs of why they want the Danger Room so badly. This was a good issue but not a great one. There are some great characterizations found in here though.

The issue starts out with Rogue in a lot of trouble in the Danger Room sequence. Her only absorbed personality, Mystique, begins to take over to help her get out of trouble. This part of the comic works well because of the flashback explaining how this all possible when Rogue went to Beast after having this happen with the Ms Marvel persona.

Then we get a lot of conversing between Xavier and the Shi’Ar salvage gang. It felt odd to me that the salvage gang was so much more advanced than the mutants and yet they desire the Danger Room so badly. It seems like they only want to escape the sequence at this point, but why weren’t they smart enough to get out of it themselves? I struggled with this part of the comic. I’d bet there is more to this to come in the next issues but in the moment here I was left a little unfulfilled.

The remainder of the comic is spent with Xavier unraveling the Danger Room’s purpose and plan while Rogue continues to struggle through the sequence that seems to have been made entirely to mess with her head and destroy her. Rogue has some great moments with the Mystique ghost in her head and Xavier has some brilliant dissection of the Danger Room’s simulation and ultimate goal. Their characters came out in this comic head and shoulders above the others.

The artwork was terrific as it always has been in this series. Some of the better parts were when Xavier decides to just walk through the simulation scenes. The confidence and arrogance that Xavier shows is perfectly depicted here. Also, the array of characters finding their way into the simulation kept me picking through the pages constantly.

The comic has some high points in it but for the most part spends a great deal of time trying to explain how the Shi’Ar guys failed to pick up the Danger Room and how the Danger Room is doing X or Y. This is all important information to the story, but when presented all in one issue it just felt like a slow-down issue. It seems like a lot of middle arc issues end up doing this as they set the characters up for the big bang ending. I liked the issue but didn’t really love it as much as others before it. Gambit was also barely in it. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? When dealing with Rogue so deeply I’m thinking it’s a bad thing. I’m sure the ending to the arc will make everything more clear.

3 out of 5 geek goggles