Rise of the Powers of X #2: Long Distance Charges May Apply

Kieron Gillen’s narrative skills are operating at full force as this second issue scoops up the threads unskeined by the first and takes them at a run. Like all the best X-Men story, this take has a great many moving parts. There’s the secret plan within the X-Men’s hidden base, and the secret plan inside of that (known only to a few), and one more plan buried within the other two that just one man (marked by hubris, and by loss) holds close to himself the way a child might clutch an injured dove.

This issue is worth more than one read through if only to fully appreciate how well the pieces slot together, and how prettily the pieces of the wheel clack together as it spins, but (like every story Gillen writes) the plot works all the better because of the extremely delicate character work the writer puts in. There’s a poignancy to Moira, here, that paints humanity on the dappled skin of the monster. The creature haunting Doug is fierce, and terrifying, and Rasputin IV is tough, vulnerable, and in her own way equally frightening. But the center of the book is, of course, Charles Xavier himself. What is he willing to sacrifice to save the world?

One suspects that, ultimately, the answer is ‘anything but himself’.

RB Silva’s art is, as usual, extremely well suited to this hyper-futuristic quasi-dystopia. He balances a tender, brutal level of acting with big, splashy fight scenes, and homey, nostalgic realism with mind-shredding surreality. David Curriel’s colors are splashy and vibrant, supporting the line art in a very effective way.