X-Men Legacy 7
Spurrier (w) and Huat and Yeung (a) and Villarrubia (c)
After a run-in with a version of his father lurking in his brain, David Haller is back to where he started, maybe even further back than that. His powers aren't necessarily driven by confidence, like Captain Britain or Kid Briton, but they require lots of focus and focus has taken a bit of a dive since his father's appearance and subsequent guilt-tripping. At the start of the issue, David can only really use his telepathy powers, which is problematic as he intends to start a fight with the Church of the Happy Host, a mutant-hating religious organization which was responsible for turning Luca (from the last arc; Blindfold's horrible brother) into the full-blown mutant-hater he became. David can also see astral projections so, going into the church, he knows that Blindfold is following him. Inside, it turns out the church was a little more prepared than he thought, wearing helmets to block out telepathic suggestions and equipped with pills that destroy the X-gene. Blindfold rushes in to save David, unbeknownst to the priests, and he is led away from the sanctuary to wait while they prepared their prayer cleanse. David and Blindfold chat and David lays out his plan for pre-emptive strikes against organizations that would do mutants harm, as opposed to the reactive strikes the X-Men have always made. It's kind of like a one man X-Force team, made up of one man who is unbelievably powerful in the right mood. After a quick blessing from Blindfold, David's confidence is somewhat restored and his focus allows him to access several more powers, including the power to instill images into the priests that make them seem guilty of mutant hate crimes (to SWORD, at least, who has been tracking David all issue after his recent teleportation of an entire Dire Wraith squadron to the Jean Grey School). SWORD shows up and arrests the church and, unable to tie anything to David, Abigail Brand tells David that she's watching him.
In the first issue since his first major arc ended, X-Men Legacy is taking another turn for good. This book has been such a surprise to me; not because I was expecting bad things, per se, I just wasn't expecting something so good. David Haller is a very interesting character, Blindfold is becoming interesting after years of me not caring at all about her, and the plot that David is setting himself seems full of places to go and exciting things to do. There have been plenty of books in Marvel NOW! that have truly surprised me with their quality (some, like Avengers Arena and Cable and X-Force and Uncanny Avengers, came out of nowhere to floor me while others came from solid backgrounds, like Thor and Captain America and New Avengers, but switched enough that being absolutely delighted by them came as something of a shock) and X-Men Legacy is, in a way, even more of a surprise than those books. Every other book in Marvel NOW!, I had some sort of a feeling about before its start. This one I had no thoughts on and it came in strong and hasn't let up. Great book so far.
Ultimate X-Men 24
Wood (w) and Asrar and Vlasco (a) and Bellaire (c)
This newest arc comes with a cliffhanger beginning and a smaller cliffhanger ending. I guess we're sitting on some weird precipice with two cliffs. We start two weeks in the future, with military surrounding the head group of mutants in Utopia, Kitty, Storm, Jimmy, Blackheath, and Rogue. Then we cut back two weeks to find that Utopia is finally starting to build. Magma has raised the tiny nation physically up, giving natural borders, while Blackheath and Storm have created plant life. The mutants now have protection, water, food, resources, and land. Mutants start filing in, excited by the new prospects. Mach Two's group is still lurking around, unnoticed by the others, biding their time. Meanwhile, the US government is plotting their own little plan, one that would name mutants government property (after the revelation some time ago in the Ultimate universe that mutants were created by the government) and therefore all of their patents and land and everything else would belong to America. The book ends with Jimmy meeting with two members of Mach Two's group to discuss some sort of offer.
One of the great things about this book in the last couple years is that it's really characterized mutantdom. Not just the mutants themselves (which is important and which this book has done), but what it means to be mutant in this world. There's something inherent in the 616 that says that mutants are different and that they're prejudiced against, for sure, but I'm not sure it has the same weight it does over in the Ultimate universe, which is impressive considering the age of each universe. I think Remender's Uncanny Avengers book is doing well to show off how hated mutants are, but X-Men books tend to get muddled down with their own villains, or with mutant villains. Not that those stories are bad or that they don't belong because a good deal of them are great, but you tend to get pulled away and kind of forget that the X-Men are hated by many around the world simply for being what they are. That never seems to happen in the Ultimate universe. Someone, in every issue, is plotting against mutants as a race. There are plenty of entities in the 616 that do that as well, sure, and you do see it come up pretty regularly. Maybe it's just the sheer number of X-books in the 616; though they're all fairly different, typically, and pretty good, usually, you wouldn't read the five different X books where they're all fighting Sentinels all the time. The Ultimate universe has one X-book, so showing that mutants are feared and hated and isolated maybe works better. It's certainly working right now. Even when mutants are doing pretty well and led by a peaceful leader, we can see the hatred and fear from the outside. It's a great illustration of how this world functions.
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