X-Men: Nation X {Collected}

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(c) Marvel

Rented from Library

Summary: Now that the X-Men have made their new home they have to keep it afloat.   Everything changes as past a present clash and nothing is like it was before.   Can Cyclops keep everything going or is he just a shadow of the leader everyone trusts he is?

Overall: 2 Stars

I love X-Men, I’m not gonna lie.   I think that’s why this is even getting 2 stars.   My thoughts the entire time were “what is going on!”   And…it never really got explained.   I’m caught up with the whole “move to Utopia” thing but that didn’t help much.   The first half was good, the rest not…eh.

For Fans (of the X-Men): 3 Stars

            If you flip through and catch your favorite character somewhere in the second half…don’t get it.   First half?   Find it at a library.

For Readers: 1 Star

            Don’t like X-men or don’t care?   Don’t read.   Period.

The Good: The first half.   A little…weird at times but other than that I like it.   Consistent art, good storytelling, and so on.   The entire volume did include a lot of more minor characters which is both good and bad.   Overall, the first half is the good.

The Bad: And the second half is the bad.   What on earth!   Half of the time everyone was out of character and the other half the art was so distracting that it was hard to read.   And really, Marvel, decide if you want to write in accents or not.   Cannonball kept going from super Kentucky to nothing issue to issue.   A middle would be nice (especially since he’s been away from home so long he’d lose at least some but not all of it.   Logic people).    One minor quip I have is a fail on background.   Hellion shows up in the background twice and both times he’s done totally wrong.   The second time he even has his Academy X uniform on!

 
Art: 3
-Coverart: 4 Stars

Coverart was consistently good.   My only problems is that a lot of them were misleading.   They’d have characters that didn’t even show up.
-Overall: 2 Stars
            First half was good but the second half kept changes styles drastically.   Half of them I didn’t even like.   Some of them were too childish while others only fit certain characters.   Cannonball had a one shot and for him and him alone the style was okay, but only if it wasn’t a serious story (which it wasn’t).   I think the second half would have been better collected separate from the first half, honestly.

Story: 3 Stars
-Characters: 2 Stars

            Characterization was out the window in the second half.   Namor and Colossus were consistently good but no one else.   Anole was acting like he did in early New X-Men but he’s grown up since then.   Surge practically had split personality disorder since every time she showed up she was way different.    She’s mature, then petty and childish and then calm and “oh, I’ll stay out of the way”.   Make up your mind.   Emma went from The White Queen to lovey dovey with Scott (which was explained) to a stuck-up, rich, bored child.   All this to say the first half was good, not the second (see a theme?).

-Plot: 3 Stars

            I wish I could grade this higher.   The first half was, again, good.   Plot flowed and I mostly knew what was going on.   The second half had no plot at all and was just a blind, unconnected shoots at nothing.

-Dialogue: 4 Stars

            First the bad.   In “Big Boy Pants” Mercury gets a bubble with a smiley face, twice.   Really?   That seems SO unprofessional to me.   Accents kept going away and coming back.   Other than that, though, I liked it.   Ignoring the off-the-wall-what-the-heck “Dooptopia” everything was in order.   People said what the needed to the way they should have.   And it had it’s funny moments, as comic should.   “…combined with a call from the woman in reception reporting a giant metal man just threw a sculpture through our front door has lead me to believe an encounter with the X-men is imminent.”

Misc notes: If the book had been split in half with the second half being just the collection of unconnected one-shots then this review would have been much higher.   The first half is good, it has a point and I like the art.   Second half gives me mixed feelings and combining them made me like the first half less

Favorite:
-Scene:

-Sidestory: “Testament”, by far.   The art wasn’t all that good, in fact I didn’t like it, but the story was good.   Colossus, again, but still, I liked it.   It was really sad to see Piotr trying to cling to the past while Illyana just wants to keep going forward.

-Lines: This is from Testament: “There is an old Russian saying “The nest is the eggs, not the sticks.”   And maybe it means that home isn’t about the place or history.   It’s not about the past.   Maybe it means home is about the present, what’s in front of you.   And planning for what’s to come.   I’m not sure anymore.   I haven’t lived in Russia for a long, long time.”

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