Thursday, November 24, 2016

Death of X #4 (of 4)

   From time to time the major comics companies will put out a comic that arrives, basically, as a heartfelt "UP YOURS" to longtime comics fans.

   Here's one now.

   The final issue of Death of X is meant to seal the deal, to show us why the Inhumans and the X-Men must fight (in an upcoming Event mini-series, natch).

   And we get a little bit of that. The Inhumans set loose on the world two clouds of Terrigen Mist (exposure to it reveals a small number of normal people as Inhumans and gives them some kind of power).

   But exposure to the mists has terrible (often fatal) effects on mutants - so the X-Men decide to destroy those clouds.

   Of course, instead of sitting down and talking about solutions, the two opposing forces instead fight to the death - even though there's no reason for the fight to escalate that far.

   The story rather casually, almost as an afterthought, takes out a character who I've been a fan of since my earliest days as a reader (we're talking early '60s here), and it's terribly wasteful and pointless.

   It does have this effect: I'll be avoiding the mini-series that follows, along with the spinoff storylines. Perhaps if they ever get around to correcting the numerous (and egregious) harms they've inflicted on both the X-books and the Inhumans (numerous deaths and ongoing character assassinations), I'll return.

   But I'm not holding my breath waiting.

Grade: D

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3 comments:

Kevin Findley said...

Is it possible that Disney has ordered all mutants to the back burner and is pushing the Inhumans since they have control over those characters? Let's face it, Marvel really isn't in control of their own characters anymore.

Kyle said...

Hey Kevin, I think I agree with you if you're meaning control as in movie rights... I'm sure they could continue to pump out 10 Wolverine titles a month if they wanted. But the films are probably the reason they are downplaying the mutants and the Fantastic Four. Why advertise properties they can't exploit on screen? I have no idea when or what conditions they could get those characters back.

Kyle

Chuck said...

I think it's true that the movie side of the company is driving the business - and that's not surprising, considering what a cash cow the films have become. But it's hard to figure why Marvel would (or is) ignoring perfectly good comic titles just because they sold the film rights to certain characters. I think it's criminal that the Fantastic Four title has been shut down for, what, over a year now? It's the flagship title of the Marvel Universe - why would they let it gather dust on the shelf? Hard to figure.