Unbreakable X-Men #3: Darkness at the Bottom of the Ocean

Unbreakable X-Men #3 is a strong finish to a short but sweet story about loss and living amidst self-doubt and regret. Gail Simone (Uncanny X-Men) has brought out the best of Gambit in the past two issues and continues to build on his life without Rogue in this third issue.

The throughline, that is, the central theme of the story, in Unbreakable X-Men has primarily been about living without someone you miss and pressing on for their sake, doing the things you think would make them proud. Anyone who’s experienced loss at least once in their life will be able to relate to the version of Gambit and the other X-Men that Simone pens in this issue and the two previous issues.

Many comic book fans are tired of the same “save the world” storyline since most are built up as these big stories that are then replicated a few short years later. However, the three-issue story of Unbreakable X-Men has managed to avoid creating a similar fatigue by changing the focus from a seemingly unbeatable supervillain to the trauma of each character’s past and how it has affected or even created their present. Supervillains are a dime a dozen these days, especially X Years Later in a world fraught with problems. But relatable story arcs are far less common, and that is Unbreakable X-Men’s strength.

Mario Santoro’s (Storm) artwork may seem like an odd choice at first for the kind of story that Simone is writing, but somehow it works, partly thanks to the incredible colors of Espen Grundetjern (Doctor Strange of Asgard). Stylistically, Santoro’s art seems tailor-made for a high-action story full of flashy superpowers and heart-pumping battles. Mechanically Santoro’s art is clean, well weighted between background elements and character expression, and has the scale of a massive action story. Santoro creates an atmosphere in each scene, from the burning Louisiana farmhouse to the sprawling underwater Atlantis, that is eerie and pale in the way that many of the characters’ lives are being portrayed, which is likely how the art manages to avoid feeling disjointed and unattached from the writing.

The immediate takeaway from Unbreakable X-Men #3 is “Gambit is cool.” Which isn’t as impressive as some overly long emotional storytelling essay, but it’s more than enough. Most of the characters were well portrayed but didn’t have a substantial arc to speak of, which is to be expected with just three issues for the whole series. If anything, the third issue proved the name of the series accurate, as the X-Men are, in fact, unbreakable.