The following contains spoilers for X-Men #17, on sale now, from Marvel Comics.
As I’ve noted over the years, while everyone is currently very familiar with the concept of Batman being, in effect, «Bat-God,» there was a long period of time when it really seemed like Batman didn’t belong in the Justice League, or at least that he didn’t seem to serve a real purpose on a team filled with super-powered heroes. So, naturally, writers would often tell stories designed around, «Oh no, wait, see, Batman DOES have a purpose on the team! Honest!» That is sort of the problem that Cyclops has had over the years as being such a prominent character in a world where the most powerful members of the X-Men are, like, cosmic deities. So what is so great about Cyclops? Well, X-Men #17 explains it all!
X-Men #17 is from writer Jed MacKay, penciler Ryan Stegman, inkers JP Mayer and Livesay (plus some self-inks by Stegman), colorist Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, and letterer Clayton Cowles, and it continues the story from last issue, where the 3K-created X-Men attacked our heroes in Alaksa, while, at the same time, the mutant twin of a young Alaskan girl (whose mother is an anti-mutant bigo) who was born without a body has taken control of the body of a giant dead alien to give itself a monstrous new body, and Cassandra Nova has turned the girl against both the X-Men and the town her family is from, leaving it to Magneto to stop her using a giant Sentinel as a sort of exoskeleton (Magneto’s powers have been dealing with some problems from his Resurrection disorder, a malady where people who had been previously resurrected have their mutant powers and body suddenly give out on them)
What do we learn about 3K in this issue?
This whole arc has been about 3K (who were introduced in the first issue of the series) making their boldest attack on the X-Men yet. Something that has been interesting with 3K is that MacKay has been slowly but surely introducing the mysterious members of the group, as we met both Cassandra Nova and Wyre (who we learn, in this issue, is only in his role because Sabretooth was unavailable, although, as readers of Wolverine’s comic book know, that’s not the case anymore),
In this issue, we meet another member of the group, and, in another sign of MacKay delving deep into the history of the X-Men for this group (as shown with the use of Wyre, a character who was a major villain at the end of the original run of Alpha Flight, but hadn’t been used in over 30 years), one of the members of the group is Astra, the villain who was behind the clone of Magneto, Joseph, who was part of the X-Men in the 1990s (and helped lead to «The Magneto War» storyline).
I love how offbeat Astra is as a villain, as she seems to think cloning Magneto is her answer to any problem, or at least flipping the poles on Earth. It’s a very funny bit by MacKay.
How does Cyclops prove himself against the "new" X-Men?
It strikes me as interesting that so much of the creative team on X-Men remains the same between Ryan Stegman and Netho Diaz. I really feel like it gives the book such a strong sense of continuity to have JP Mayer, Livesay, and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo working on every issue. Plus, of course, it helps a LOT that Netho Diaz and Ryan Stegman are both overflowing with energy in their pencils, which allows for the book to just feel electric between either of the artists (Diaz, by the way, was just named as one of Marvel’s newest Stormbreakers, an honor that is well-deserved! Stegman, of course, was a Stormbreaker himself in the past).
The action scenes in this issue are excellent, but especially the stuff involving Cyclops. The leader of the fauX-Men, Scwhwarzchild, is a powerful artificially-activated mutant with gravimetric powers, and he mocks Cyclops for, well, you know, NOT being extremely powerful, but Cyclops makes clear something that he has shown many times in the past. First, part of Cyclops’ power is not just that he has force beams from his eyes, but that he can instantly gauge how to fire them to ricochet perfectly. Secondly, part of Cyclops’ skill set is that since he knows how to hit everything perfectly, that also leads to his abilities as a leader. We’ve seen him take on the entire X-Men team at once because of his ability to predict how each member will react, and adjust accordingly, and here, we see him show off that skill by essentially treating the X-Men as his powers — he uses his abilities to direct the whole team, which basically makes him the most valuable member of the team, as without him, the others might not be able to coordinate, but WITH him, they can take on seemingly all-comers.
Meanwhile, Magneto is having a hard time handling the giant alien monster that he is faced off against, and so some of the new members of the group (the adults who were artificially turned into mutants AS adults thanks to 3K’s experiments) decide that the only way to take down this giant mutant is to go to her mother for help, the mother that, you know, is an anti-mutant bigot. So, well, THAT’ll be fun.
This has shaped up to be an engaging storyline with a ton of top-level action. I am enjoying the main X-Men titles all exploring their own identities outside of the crossovers that have crept into the «From the Ashes» era, and this book is getting a strong identity as a fun, action-packed superhero series.
