Unbreakable X-Men #2
Jamison Nilsson
Recap
Rogue gave her life to stop Galactus, and in doing so, unknowingly gave another threat the key to escaping their imprisonment. Now blind and spiritually lost, Gambit mourns the loss of his beloved while aiding a new team of X-Men in stopping one last threat before he joins his wife in the afterlife.
More Age of Revelation coverage from Comic Watch:
X-Men: Book of Revelation #2: Ghosts of Kittydelphia
Omega Kids #2: Negasonic Teenage Warheads
Sinister's Six #2: Trapped Like Lab Rats
Rogue Storm #2: Gods Made From Monsters
Review
September’s Unbreakable X-Men #1 set the groundwork for a story focused on character arcs with Gambit reeling from the loss of Rogue and learning to live without her, even if he might not want to. While the second issue continues to pull on this story thread, it also expands the scope of the story to the wider threat posed by Shuvahrak to the world. These two story arcs blend together nicely with Gambit’s commitment last issue to “one last adventure” to honor Rogue’s memory. Simone Gail’s writing brings out the best of an emotionally wounded Gambit. However, without Rogue, it’s as if Gambit’s character is missing something central to his character, although that is what the writing is going for here.
Issue #2 also compiles a mammoth art team including C.F. Villa, Mario Santoro, Davide Tinto, David Marquez, A.B. Silva, Alessandro Cappuccio, and Ramon Rosanas. Bringing so many artists onboard for a single issue is worrying in most cases, as it’s incredibly easy for those artists to overpower one another and to turn the page count into a free-for-all. However, Unbreakable X-Men #2’s artistic talents blend together nicely to tell a story across multiple locations, with each artist bringing their own talents to different parts of the story. As for the finer details, multiple panels, such as one notable page towards the middle of the issue, are full of intricate line work and shading. The color work by Espen Grundetjern provides colorful texture across multiple different pencil styles without breaking continuity from the first to last pages.
The one shortcoming of Unbreakable X-Men so far has been its pacing. Multiple different story beats are strung together in rapid succession both in issue #1 and issue #2, leaving little room to breathe between the usual twists and turns. A short run of this kind of pacing is fine, but to use it for multiple issues can quickly exhaust audiences.
Final Thoughts
Unbreakable X-Men #2 is a classic “set-up” issue that gathers more characters and provides context to the big bad of the storyline, the Voice of Darkness—Shuvahrak. With an enormous art team that brings even bigger talent to the page and a writer who, so far, doesn’t waste the reader’s time, Unbreakable X-Men continues to be a story worth collecting. The two issues so far have very little breathing room between action scenes and lengthy exposition, which some readers may find overwhelming at first. My recommendation: if you picked up last month’s Unbreakable X-Men #1 and were interested in seeing where the story goes, then I recommend adding issue #2 to your collection. Alternatively, for my Gambit fans, Unbreakable X-Men continues to be one of his better characterizations in recent memory.
Unbreakable X-Men #2: Round-Up The Heroes
- Writing - 8/108/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9.5/109.5/10
- Color - 8.5/108.5/10
- Cover Art - 7/107/10
