X-Men Red #13: The Boneyard

The fact that this issue is primarily composed of talking-head panels and yet somehow still manages to be thrumming with anxiety-inducing tension is a testimony to the writer’s and artists’ tremendous skills. Much is said in this story, and little is shown — if you’ve ever sat through (or delivered) an even medium-tolerable creative writing course, you know precisely how ominous that phrase can be — and yet this issue succeeds where a more action-packed smash-em-up would almost definitely fail.

This success is entirely down to Ewing’s truly excellent understanding of his characters. He knows who these imaginary people are and what they want, and he lets that knowledge dictate where the story is going. Unlike other X-writers (Si Spurrier springs instantly and unwelcomely to mind), he doesn’t try to force characters to act in an alien manner to further the rigid structure of the plot that he has decided on. Instead, the story unfolds organically from the rich soil of characterization that Ewing has spent the last dozen issues either fermenting (in the case of his creations) or else the long history of inheritance (Storm, Bobby, Magneto) that other writers have left him to build on, so even though we never see any real action, the plot ticks forward with all of the inevitable destruction of a bomb which cannot be defused.

Jacopo Camigni and the astonishing Federico Blee have absolutely understood the assignment. They use more subtle tricks of angle, stance, acting, and lighting to hone this throbbing spear of tension to a level that is, frankly, just a little unbearable. Pay attention, in particular, to the fact that Genesis is never depicted from a level angle. She’s always skewed and bathed in the shadow of the force possessing her. It’s a subtle trick, but it is profoundly effective.