The Good
The Sisterhood looks to build on their team and Arkea asks the team to recruit new members in order to battle the X-Men. I love the idea of building this perfect super-villain team in order to take down the X-Men. There's a bit of a shocker here for X-Men fans as well that will really keep the reader invested in this story. Writer Brian Wood does extremely well with team books and he always knows how to keep the reader in suspense and build towards something great.
Kris Anka works on the art in this opening piece with Jason Keith on colors. It's solid work and helps move the story along well. The opening panel is especially cool and a great way to kick off the story and who this book follows.
Story wise, the winner here is the second half of the book, following Jubilee, Pixie, Quire, and a few others. In the last issue, some older model Sentinels, got loose, under the ocean, and are now being controlled by Arkea. This issue continues with that and it is a ton of fun.
During these scenes, Clay Mann takes over on art with Paul Mounts on colors. This is how two different artists on a book should work. It's following two different teams of X-Men, and Mann's art here is awesome. The detail and colors and beautiful and the way Mann sets these pages up is unique and eye candy.
The Bad
Not really a good jumping on point for new readers. I thought the whole #1 initiative Marvel was trying to pull off here was to get new readers on board? This plops us right into the middle of a (very good) story that's been building for quite some time.
The biggest problem with this story is that it's two shortened issues/stories, flattened into one. Now, both of these stories are fantastic, but they fit awkwardly together like someone hammering in a puzzle piece into the wrong section. The Sisterhood story is slow and builds really well, but the Jubilee/Sentinel story, at the end of the issue is nothing but action. It's a weird mix of pacing that doesn't work.
Let's get nit-picky! Storm's hair is way too tall. I only say this because as a teen, I had a mohawk half as tall as her and it took me an hour to put it up, everyday. I can only image how long it takes her. I have no suspension of disbelief when it comes to mohawks.
The Verdict
X-MEN #10 is not a good jumping on point for new readers. Those who have been reading the series since the start will continue to love what is happening here, but new readers will be extremely lost and this issue doesn't do the best job at grabbing new ones in. That being said, Wood continues to build this story and does so in a way that really keeps the reader engaged with the characters and worlds he's utilizing. There are two different artists on this book, but it works extremely well, since the artists are covering two different sections of this story. The biggest problem has to come from the pacing though since the later half of the book is nothing but action and the first half is story building, but neither of these stories cross-over into each other. Aside from that, this is still a really fun book and something I look forward to reading every single month.
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