A Very Pleasant Surprise
This was a curiosity comic. I'd heard about the Muir Island X-Men from my traipsing around this site and finally looked into them. The cover had plenty to puzzle over: Is that, for some very odd reason, Guido? Is the red haired gal Siryn? And a pre-X-Factor Polaris - what is that sexy green hair doing here? All these questions, and more, were answered.
This review, despite its opening, isn't going to dwell how interesting it was to look at a very different time for the X-Men. Suffice it to say, Claremont does his usual fantastic job here. The art is great. It is a solid book. Yes, quite a few of the characters were, at the time, C and D grade, but they are handled very nicely.
I'd like to focus mostly on three or four pages. These pages are devoted to a vision that Destiny has about herself. For some reason, she finds herself in a position to be unable to see the future. Everything is crystal. Everything is perfect in the world. Her thoughts, as she rises above the Earth, are beautiful and candidly accepting of the fact that her time is up. The art for this sequence is black, blue, and white. She meets no one, yet she realizes that she's lived a full life. The simplicity is touching and, simply said, this is why I read comics. This small sample of Claremont's work is a master's course in how the words that make up the story can take one's breath away with great visuals. Any other imperfections (like Claremont's use of too many explanation thought bubbles) are washed away with his treatment of Destiny.
This one is a keeper.