X Men- Second Coming

For the people who don't know me, not only do I spend my time twinkling away on guitar, I also read a lot of comics. Some old, some new. This little section is about new comics, specifically the current X Men storyline of Second coming.

For the last two years within the X Men universe, the gene within mutants that gives them their powers has vanished. That means no more mutants were being born, making the X men a race on the verge of extinction. Until one child was born as a mutant, and was sent into the future by Cyclops son Cable to raise her as the mutant messiah and eventually bring her back to the year 2010 as a grown woman.

The story starts in X Men second coming one shot, with the appearance of Cable and Hope in a terminator style time portal at the Xavier institute in New York. However, since their departure to the future the X Men have moved to San Francisco, and as they touch down in the present it is the X-Men's enemies who are first to greet them. This sets the tone of the story for pretty much the next three books, Cable and Hope on the run as anti mutant forces and the X Men both try to track them and save/destroy Hope respectively.

Although it would have been a tall order for the whole series, I wish the artist, David Finch, had drawn the whole series. His art is gritty, realistic and has tended to be used on most of Marvels major events in the past few years. (Such as Avengers disassembled) The changing of artists for every installment means that when it is released as a graphic novel it just wont seem to flow, which is needed in such a high paced storyline.

Another factor that concerns me is the fact that this book is being spread across all the X men titles (that's four every month) until July. Unless Marvel have some really crazy twists and turns, which I don't doubt, its going to be hard for them to keep the pace up for that long.

In a total spoiler, Marvel this week released a series of cryptic promotional covers for what lies in store. The covers have all had 'I am an X man' at the top and have contained pictures of two seemingly random Marvel characters. (For instance one had Spiderman and Blade on) One of them contained pictures of Hope and Cable, so it seems they will survive this ordeal.

One direction the X titles will most definitely be taking is one of a splintered group. The past few years they have all been together under the leadership of Cyclops, who has taken drastic measures to protect his species. He commissioned a covert team of X Men led by Wolverine to attack their enemies head on using lethal force, even keeping it secret from his other team mates. Hank McCoy, (also known as Beast) left the team when he found out, and as the story here is unfolding and the covert teams existence is becoming known, lines are being drawn in the X Men camp that will have to lead to a mass Exodus of mutants once the story ends.

Check out X Men Second coming one shot then Uncanny X men, New Mutants, X Men legacy and X force until the finale in June.