While Hickman’s steady grip on
individual character voices and motivations is on full display,
somewhere in the whole 5 way plotting procedure adopted for this
series, Hickman’s penchant for crazy concepts seems to be taking a
backseat at least so far down the line, due to which quite a few
parts of the issue appears to get carried on the sheer strength of
Hickman’s talents as a storyteller.
The book opens with Wolverine (who
conveniently manages to find a polar bear on the wrong end of the
globe) finding an ally erstwhile believed unlikely, and while this
goes completely in the face of everything Logan’s done so far in the
event, I’m definitely expecting a later twist involving both the
teams being in the situation they are in at the end of the issue all
being part of our dynamic duo’s plans.
It’s the middle portion of the issue,
involving the search for Hope Summers, that really does seem to be,
in many ways, an attempt to set up conflicts and brawls in the tie-in
issues in the most exotic locations the Marvel Universe has to offer.
Both script and art seem to just do so much better in the less
crowded scenes, with Hickman exploring the characters’
relationships with each other and Romita bringing all his experience
to the table and adding enough detailing to turn talking head scenes
into eye candy.
Speaking of Romita, consistency remains
an issue, with action scenes looking flat with plenty of messed up
anatomy. While his work certainly overall tops his recent work on
Avengers, it is still certainly not completely at par with
some of his older work such as his run on Amazing Spider-Man
with JMS.
While it has its flaws, the book
accomplishes its mission of setting up the next issue, with both
teams in positions to face and further fight for all their faiths and
beliefs, as The Phoenix finally arrives.
Score : 7.3 / 10
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