It’s good to see Juggernaut going on a tear again. I’ve been reading comics for only 10 years or so – about the time that the “Huggernaut” moniker began. So I haven’t had a storyline where Juggernaut is out to cause true mayhem without reading older titles, which just isn’t the same.
That’s not the only story going on, though. Kieron Gillen introduces a couple of arcs that are both continuations of old storylines. Given that both DC and Marvel are working hard to make it easy for new readers to jump on, that’s a pretty difficult task without forcing bad exposition on the reader. And Gillen pulls it off well. I’ve heard some criticisms that he didn’t give enough detail, but I think if he had given readers 100% of the previous story it would get into the forced exposition territory.
Uncanny X-Men readers are introduced to a storyline that started in New Mutants. Illyana Rasputin, Colossus’ sister, is imprisoned for freeing Legion to save the world from gods in Limbo. She feels no remorse for what she did, but she also doesn’t feel bad about being imprisoned. When Colossus calls her captivity inhuman, she says, “No, summoning a reality-warping mutant to settle an old grudge was inhuman. This is merely prudent.” To me it seems like she is emotionally in limbo — she’s not happy, sad, angry or any other emotion. Occasionally she smirks, but her words don’t indicate that she’s happy at all. At one moment she says, “I’m not going anywhere. Which is fine, because I’ve nowhere to go and nothing else left to do,” which sounds a little like giving up, but at the same time it sounds like she’s already accomplished everything she was destined to accomplish.
In short, even though she once lived in Marvel’s depiction of Limbo — which seems more like hell — she is now emotionally and physically in limbo.
The third storyline involves Namor hitting on Emma Frost. She makes it pretty clear that she is not interested, so I don’t expect her to hop in bed with him anytime soon. Namor does plant a seed before leaving that could open cracks in Frost’s relationship with Scott Summers, though.
I’m a fan of Greg Land and this is some of his better work. It’s his usual realism with a bit of stylistic characteristics as well. The only thing that I thought was bad was the choice to make Cyclops look like a cross between Tom Cruise and Don Johnson circa Miami Vice. If it weren’t for the pastel shirt I probably wouldn’t say that, so it might not be Land’s fault.
All in all I was pretty happy with this book. I’ve been trying to dump this book from my pull list because I buy way too many comics, but Gillen and company keep coming up with stories that force me to buy their books.
Geoff Collins is a former sports reporter in Chicago, IL. He is now studying computer networking and considering committing a crime to get health care, like this man.