X-Men Red #5: How To Survive A Broken Heart

I would not recommend reading this issue right before bed, unless your preferred method of sleep-preparation involves ramping up your pulse and openly weeping as you watch some of your favorite characters get their faces melted off. If that is how you enjoy winding down from your day, I’m not going to judge.

A lot can happen over the span of an hour. Worlds can end and empires can fall. The spouse you kissed as you left your apartment at 9:01 could be down at the station, identifying the tattered rags of your corpse at 10:02. In this issue of X-Men: Red Al Ewing gives us a second by second account of the dying gasps of a world. It is masterfully done. His narrative technique is visceral, raising the emotional stakes of the current crossover event by twisting a knife in the guts of his characters. The fact that he manages to do so without dropping the threads of his own stories (imperialism, class struggles, the value of respecting the cultures in which you find yourself) is a testament to his tremendous skill as a writer. 

Some characters, facing this Armageddon, have moments of tremendous nobility and bravery. Nightcrawler battles a foe who is incapable of losing. Magneto wages war with a man who holds his old, battered heart in his hands. Cable does what Cable always does. They all hold the line, and as they fall you fall with them. 

Stefano Caselli’s art is an astonishment. His line work is so clear that you feel each point of impact, as though it were happening to you. Federico Blee’s color work sucks you into the story, a fist tearing you beneath the waters. When these artists work together, they’ll never let you go. 

This story is an astonishment. It raises the stakes of the current massive crossover event while never dropping the thematic threads of the primary story. Readers of both series will be swept away by this flood.