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Jun 07, 2018
This was a great comic week and Tom Taylor continues the high-quality story that is X-Men Red. he also excels at writing Jean Grey as the leader the X-Men were destined to have. Jean Grey is brilliant, thoughtful, heroic, and a force of nature. The roster of this team is spot on for being the premiere book of the X-men. The stakes are high and the villain controlling things is a truly worthy one. Taylor creates a story that returns the mutants to being noble while turning up the tension from issue to issue. We have only been setting the stage and adding to the supporting cast but at 5 issues in the story feels like it is moving and never like we slowed down to introduce characters (Exiles current series is falling into that trap). Despite t
he cover this not a big issue for Namor. If you are jumping in just to see him then this issue is going to disappoint.
X-Men Red is my favorite team book at Marvel and it continues to deliver. You are best served to read from the beginning.
Pick it up more
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Aug 24, 2018
Namor🧜ðŸ¼â€â™‚ï¸ðŸ–¤
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Jun 10, 2018
Welcome to the Oblivion Bar where the first round is on me and the pretzels are free! Be warned: like the pickled eggs at the bar, this issue is going to get SPOILED rotten.
Ok, so this always comes off sounding bad.... and sometimes it can be... but this was a REALLY quick read. I’m going with 6 minutes max. That said, it was fantastic. The basic layout of the issue was set up with huge splash pages of art filled with old school X-men vibes. Taylor is hitting home run after home run with this book and anyone interested in an X-book really needs to add this to their pull list.
Let’s start with a quick overview of Red. So, Jean is forming her team together and their new base of operations is with Namor underwater. Casandra Nova ha
s created nanotechnology that places nanite sentinels in the brains of humans and mutants alike to cause fear and hate towards all mutants. As awful as this is to say, it’s genius. She’s artificially spreading hate around the globe. Well, X-Red as figured this out and created suits that will keep them safe from the nanotech while they go out and attempt to put a stop to this once and for all.
This issue opens with Cassandra Nova getting the Polish President to sign a law basically making mutants public enemy number 1. He then sends the government to track down all mutants on his soil and round them up. We then jump to the man who shot and killed that little girl who was a mutant in issue 4 who was with Gambit. He’s in the hospital being treated.
Gambit breaks into the hospital to not only figure things out, but maybe to get some vengeance too. It’s not stated since he is unable to go through with any course of action because Jean and X-Red appear there waiting in the room. Jean linked her mind with Trinary and went into that man’s mind and found one of Casandra Nova’s nanobots. Together, Jean and Trinary were able to use both their abilities to basically turn off the nanobots in his brain. After doing so, the man crumbles realizing what he did. He never wanted to hurt anyone but the nano-sentinel forced feelings and actions into him that he would never have done normally.
Nightcrawler teleports them all out of there with Gambit, who I guess will also be joining the team, to a freshly painted new Sentinel-X with rainbows and pots of gold. This is basically a hollowed out Sentinel that X-Red is using to fly around as a team. The team loads up in Sentinel-X and heads to the borders of Poland to protect a large group of mutants trying to leave the country.
Taylor does a great job of showing a team of heroes working together. He’s been great at this for a long time now. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at Injustice. Some writers have a difficult time incorporating multiple heroes in a story... but not Taylormade! He shows Trinary using Sentinel-X as s shield, Jean stopping bullets with her mind, Nightcrawler teleporting Wolverine and Honey Badger in for combat, Gentle “Hulking†out to protect mutants, and Namor throwing around his diplomacy in order to save these mutant civilians. This shouldn’t be overlooked. It is hard to give everyone in a team book a job to do during a fight. It’s hard to give value to all characters throughout the story. Taylor does a fantastic job with that, which ultimately leads us to another reason why this is by far the best X-book out right now.
Since the battle was taking place on the ocean border, Namor basically tells the Polish government to back off while he gives these mutant civilians free passage through his oceans. He threatens them by saying if they don’t allow them to leave with him now, he will not let Poland fly over or use his waters ever again. Needless to say, the Polish government backs off allowing the people to leave. As the mutant civilians leave, Jean basically Vulcan mind melts the Polish humans and mutants together so the humans can feel and understand what their actions are truly doing.
Jeans logic is to use truth to fight hate. It was an interesting strategy to implement and I’m interested to see where that strategy will lead as we go through the series. If you knew how hurtful your jokes were that you said to your friends sometimes, would you continue to poke at them? If you could truly feel how much you hurt them, would you continue to hurt them? It’s an interesting theory that I hope Taylor continues to play with.
Jean is a leader. She may be THEE leader the X-books have been searching for all along. To me, this book is a “Fresh†look at the X-men that’s not confusing, straightforward, and easy to follow. Pick it up and add this to your pull.
If you like what you heard, love talking all types of comics, and are interested in joining a comic chat group, hit me up at dispatchdcu@gmail.com or @dispatchdcu on twitter. Catch you all later! Peace more
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Jun 09, 2018
I'm liking these series, and it helps that Jean is one of my all time favorite characters, but I could use a bit more subtlety on references to current world politics and a faster pace. For a monthly series taking so long to setup the villain and the main conflict might kill the hype people had for this, myself included, or force people to trade wait and risk killing the series.
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Dec 18, 2018
Gambit's story dove-tails into the main narrative with a meaty "just like we planned it" click. From there, the team acts to oppose the first Cassandra-directed national-level oppression of mutants. I hope Jean reviews her team's effectiveness soon. Her telepathy and Namor's Atlantean infrastructure are real assets for operating on this scale. A team of stabby bamf-y explode-y mutants charging at panicky soldiers, not so much. In this issue, things work out on the Baltic coast, but the outcome was way more touch-and-go than it needed to be.
Though I'm raising nerdy debate points about the overall effectiveness of the Red mission, don't doubt that I'm grateful to see a team tackling hatred on a global scale. Red seems to reach for the hig
her potential of an X-book in a way that Blue and Gold don't even acknowledge as a possibility. Sure, it all comes down to foiling world-dominating or genocidal bad guys, but why not dress it up with some interesting ideas while we're at it?
more
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Jun 09, 2018
wow! so all this time, all these years I've never been a fan of any X-title. None. And all it took was to get Tom Taylor on board and I'm really liking it! The art isn't bad, but isn't great either. With Laura and Gabby here I had to give it a try, and... this is really good!
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Jun 10, 2018
Tom Taylor is wanted for passing fan fiction off as the genuine article, if you see this man, please contact authorities.
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Jun 06, 2018
Blah.
Someone should explain to Tom Taylor how Nightcrawler's powers work. It's a strain for Nightcrawler to teleport someone in addition to himself and he would never port four people at once. Also, he never teleports somewhere he can't see unless the situation is dire. These are the sorts of things an editor should catch. This book has four of them.
Jean says "We're going to have their backs." Why does Jean speak like a millennial? Here's a tip. When the characters of a story all speak like the writer, it means the writer is not doing his job.
Apparently all the Polish military needs is for their political leaders to start issuing crazy orders and they immediately start shooting civilians. When the X-Men confront them they actual
ly allow the army to fire at the mutants for a moment before Jean remembers that she's a powerful telepath. She then mind zaps everyone except the general. First of all, a general would never personally oversee a mass killing, that's what Colonels are for. Second, tactically speaking, if you were going to mind control a group quickly and in the heat of battle, keeping in mind your own limitations, it seems like you should start with the officers. This is why Storm should be leading this group.
Speaking of tactical mistakes, Tom Taylor singles out Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in a clumsy allusion to the real life aversion these countries have for muslim refugees. But at the same time he makes it clear that the political leaders are being mind controlled by Cassandra Nova, which would effectively absolve them of any moral responsibility. Taylor actually manages to neutralize his own virtue signaling, which would pretty impressive if he had done it intentionally.
On the plus side, Honey Badger didn't do anything stupid in this issue. more
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Jun 09, 2018
So far this book has not demonstrated a reason fo exist. It feels redundant and irrelevant, with its generic mutant persectution storyline. It scores some point as its heart is in the right place as a plea against prejudice. It even sets a major showdown in currently right wing Poland as a place which goes all out to persecute mutants with its army.
But there is no character development. It’s six issues and we still don’t know what it feels like for Jean Grey to be back from the dead. The new mutants, Trinary, are boring. Thor Storm is tacky and the presence of Namor is jarring, especially in his save the day final appearance at the end of the book.
I guess further character development for Jean is being postponed till after Extermina
tion. By the way, the one page preview of Extermination is the best part of the book.
Not a fan of Asrar’s sketchy art either. more
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Jun 13, 2018
Just shit
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