X-Men #202

I wasn't a huge fan when Mike Carey and Humberto Ramos took over the X-Men. I thought Carey's chosen team was an interesting choice, but didn't find it worked well, and Ramos' art style was too exaggerated for my taste. After a story arc or two they slowly won me over. Carey's characterization and team dynamic greatly improved in a short period of time, and I found that Ramos' style, although still exaggerated, was toned down a bit. When it came apparent that all these story arcs were actually linked together and part of Carey's much bigger plan for the X-Men, he then had me hooked.

The dysfunctional X-Men team of this book doesn't really exist anymore. With half the team switching sides, dead (or presumed) or in a comatose state we only have Cannonball and Iceman left running around free. These are two X-Men fan favorites that unfortunately weren't always top on the list of the various writers that have come and gone from the X-Titles. It's great to see them back in the spotlight with a writer that seems to know how to actually use them properly. While this team might not exist anymore, Carey borrows the rosters from Astonishing X-Men and New X-Men for this story. I'm always a little worried when another writer uses characters from other books, but Carey has everyone's character down pat here and the sheer multitude of X-Men characters makes the story feel that much more important. Sure it's reminiscent of the big X-Men events of the past, but when is the last time we had one of those anyways? This really is good classic X-Men fun.

I love it when a writer has confidence in the artist to get certain things across in a story, and doesn't have the characters explain everything. Having a character explain how they're powers work, and how they're about to use them in the middle of a battle is one of the biggest comic book cliches and has no place in modern comic books. Mike Carey is one of the exceptional writers that actually let's the artist do his job, which ends up being my biggest problem with this issue. While I've come to appreciate Ramos' style, his angles and frames leave much to be desired. Some scenes just don't make any sense if you follow them from frame to frame, while some panels just make you wonder why you're looking at the action from this angle. He also chooses to use extreme close-ups sometimes when it would be much clearer to see the action from a little further away.

I'm not sure how to take the Endangered Species storyline anymore. After 9 chapters you'd have to be an idiot not to notice the same formula used in each and every short story thus far. The formula is as follows: not much is accomplished as to finding a cure, and the last panel of the story has a big (or minor) "reveal". Now are they seriously going to continue this trend for all 17 parts? So far this seems to be more of a character driven story about Beast then anything else... which actually works well. It's interesting to see Beast slowly considering more and more unethical practices as his desperation to find a solution to save the mutant race escalates. While that is interesting, it's not enough to keep me interested in a 17 part story. Things better pick up soon.