Mutant X Mondays: Mutant X #10 & #11

 I decided to combine this week's edition and give you two issues of Mutant X.  I gave you a tease last issue so as to not really give the cliffhanger away, but as the cover shows it is Magneto and the X-Men that have come home in this alternate dimension.  Magneto is majestic on the last page of issue 9 as he tells us a little boy asked him to come and get his father.  He is no less a force as we see him stand up to the Goblin Queen in the opening pages of issue 10.

She retreats before what appears to be a strong and commanding Magneto.  We learn later that Polaris is propping up his powers with her own.  It is just her and her Dad, Magneto that saved Alex.  This deviates from the 616 Marvel Universe as there Polaris was deemed to not be Magneto's daughter.  Still Alex is faced with the image of the woman from his reality that he loves still and the man that for years he has held as an enemy prepared to take him home to his not really my son Scotty.

Oh if that were the case.  You see the Goblin Queen has now truly been able to combine the demonic life forces within her Sentinels and a light show of that power leads the trio into a trap.  Even a demonic version of the futuristic Sentinel Nimrod appears.  All would seem lost if not for the arrival of the X-Men.  Roll call is as follows; Mystique, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver, and rounded out by the already present Polaris.  Soon Havok blasts all foes and they all escape and live to fight another day.  Or just read Issue 11 already and see what happens next.

This is a Scotty Summers issue.  It starts with him watching everyone discussing his Mom and what to do.  Soon we have Bloodstorm abducting him.  I am sure if she had not her vampiric powers Electra would have killed her.  That is one skilled nanny little Scotty has.  In the between pages we get a glimpse of Madelyne Pryor as she seems to be trying to gain the advantage over the Goblin Entity.  It is a neat concept here having this opposite to the Phoenix Force.  It is pure evil and soon we watch it consume Maddie once more, but it strikes a note of foreshadowing.

We watch as Brute comes to see Scotty and because his mind is simple maybe it is why he is the first to fight off the Goblin Queen's mind control.  Soon he is trying to get Scotty free and becomes barbecue under The Fallen's flames.  The Fallen reveals that he is operating under his own mind and tries to kill Scotty.  Iceman and Bloodstorm become clear head long enough to aid Scotty.  The Maddie appears and The Fallen is in for a world of hurt.  That is when the strange happens.  Maddie hugs her boy and sends Brute away with him before we get full Goblin Queen again.  This leads us up to a milestone issue 12 of the series.

BDS

Flashback Friday: Mutant X #1

 

            In the late 90’s I had begun reviewing comics and like many reviewers at the time I was being critical of Howard Mackie.  Remember that these were the days of Ben Reilly as Spider-Man.  The poor fellow that was burdened with the whole Clone Saga was Howard Mackie.  He was being complained about and even from his writing on the Spidey titles one could feel his heart might not have been in the stories.  Along the same time Mackie was handed the reins of a new title.  The name of that book was Mutant X.

            The TV Show strangely would not be far behind, but they were totally different.  The set up is simple.  Take Alex Summers and blew him to bits in X-Factor.  Let his spirit float into a nexus of all realities then meld with a dying Alex Summers of an alternate reality.  Then you have an entire new set of Marvel characters that are similar yet drastically different.  It was a really under appreciated comic.  Mackie was set free to play in a cool sandbox where he could imagine the toys.

            Alex comes to in the middle of a battle with weird looking Sentinels.  His teammates are his wife, Madelyne Summers, the vampiric Storm, Bloodstorm, a horribly mutated simple-minded Henry McCoy, The Brute, the Loki cursed Ice-Man, a creepy Warren Worthington III, The Fallen.  A very disturbing team of mutant heroes.  Let me just say that Alex was very confused, and that was before he met his son Scotty.  It is a wild beginning that just gets better as the issues come out.

            One great thing about this series is the way that they are so common in the back issue bins and out in the flea market circuit.  I would guess that maybe stores bought this book like they did anything with an “X” on the title.  That might explain why it is an easy book to buy as a back issue collection.  It is a great and fun read that really brought my respect for this awesome writer back.  He was saddled with an impossible task during the Clone Saga.  The greed that took that story farther than planned drug him down and you could tell with the work product.  Mutant X reminds us why Mackie was the writer chosen to write the titles before the Clone Saga.

BDS