X-Men #12: Behold The Exposition Dump!

So, this issue was basically a giant exposition dump — one which palpably valued quantity over either craft or art. Among the many, many things we learned: Apocalypse had a wife, and now she’s dead. 

If this world building had been spread out over two or three issues, it would have been fascinating. We have: a religion based around endless resurrection, a quiet council, a turncoat (whose Mutant Power is that they cannot lose), ten towers which protect a secret nation, mutant X-shaped crucifixions, immortal children, a blind prophet, and an island being blasted into the sky. 

There are an incredible number of reflections of things that are going on in Krakoa (Destiny, Nightcrawler’s religion, the aforementioned quiet council, and so many more that I could turn this issue into a listicle, if I had the time) but they’re dumped on the reader with all the finesse of that truck of manure that landed on Biff in Back to the Future. It was so bad but it had the potential to be incredibly good — if it had been told with any sense of pacing at all. 

There were other problems, of course. This re-write casts Mutants in almost the same role as the Inhumans in terms of their genesis (that’s a joke. You’ll get it once you’ve read the damned thing) and we all know how well they worked out for Marvel. If Mutants are the natural evolution (or one such evolution) of humans, how are they entitled to status as a separate species? 

In any case, I pitied Yu’s aching metacarpals, reading this. He did a great job, considering that he was being forced to lend any kind of emotional weight at all to this infodump. He managed to make the Summoner believable and even likeable, even though, if you recall from the data sheet, his job is summoning demons. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that he is now summoning the Mutants of Krakoa… It depends on how you classify ‘demons’ I suppose.

This issue is crammed with interesting ideas, or ideas that could have been interesting, but the writing was not at all engaging, in practice, despite the heavy lifting done by the art.