X-Men #4

Happy Father’s Day!

Brian Wood’s X-Men #4 seems to be a fill-in issue, as it is mostly self-contained and features art by David Lopez. There’s two really interesting stories going on that mostly show the more emotional parts of these characters.

As the cover shows, the main one features Wolverine and Jubilee, as they visit the mall where the X-Men first wound up encountering her many years ago. Through their conversation, it really shows how she has matured through the years and now that she has her son Shogo in her life, she really is an adult. You also really get a look into her relationship with Wolverine, who really treats her like his daughter. He winds up buying her childhood home so she has a place to raise the child.

The rest of the X-Men are trying to rescue a crashing airplane, which should be simple if not routine for them. However, this new group is still trying to get their team dynamics under control if they’re going to save the day. Spoil alert: they did. And quite frankly I didn’t care that much, as the scenes with Wolverine and Jubilee were so good.

X-Men #1-3: Primer

It’s ladies night!

I keep forgetting how awesome a writer Brian Wood is and the first three issues of X-Men are just another example.

This volume of X-Men focuses mainly on the female characters in the X-Universe which is a first. Quite frankly, it’s about time.

The story starts with Jubilee showing up at the X-Mansion with her baby (well I should say adopted baby that she found) Shogo because the sentient bacteria creature named John Sublime has been stalking them. I thought this was a new character, but it turns out that he’s been around since the early 1990s.

After being stopped by an X-Men squad of Psylocke, Storm, Rogue, Rachel Summers and Shadowcat, Sublime reveals why he was stalking Jubilee and Shogo. It turns out his evil sister Arkea–who is also an evil bacteria organism herself–was travelling around on Shogo’s body. Things get worse when Arkea then infects the unconscious body of Omega Sentinel and the X-Men have to find a way to stop Arkea without using lethal force.

Wood just hits this one out of the park; everyone in this book gets equal story time. Now I know I’m biased because I like all these characters, but everyone comes across looking really important. He even managed to make Sublime and Arkea interesting.

On the art side, Olivier Coipel is no slouch. What a great way to start a new series.