Let’s take a moment to marvel (no pun intended) at that brilliant cover, a tribute to what many believe to be the best Beatles album of all time. And yeah, it’s Michael Golden–one of my all-time favorite artists.
This might be the best issue of this series so far. That’s largely not a big feat–this anthology book has mostly sucked–but this issue is very nice.
Four quick stories, featuring several less-known creators and/or guys who don’t often do X-books.
#1: Jubilee, Monet and Husk (referred to as “Banshee’s Angels” in the story) visit the best disco in the universe. Created by two rising indie creators, Andi Watson and Jim Mahfood.
#2: 2nd story: Nightcrawler mourns the recent death of Colossus and rejects Mister Sinister’s offer to resurrect Peter. He also quits the X-Men, making this the most “in-continuity” significant story of the issue. Although, how significant is it, really, since of course Nightcrawler is back with the team so quickly it’s hard to notice he’s gone. Still, it’s a solid story.
#3 is by John Ostrander and Mike Lilly, and, like the first story, features dancing. Rogue almost gets in a barfight when she goes out line-dancing, but other homo sapiens actually defend her from the anti-mutant bigots so she doesn’t have to do anything.
I don’t think there’s EVER been a story like that before, where the humans stick up for the mutants and the mutants don’t use their powers?
Finally, Pruett and Czop create a second in-continuity tale where Quicksilver warns Wolverine about what a dick Magneto is. It’s the most dispensable of the four stories, and it’s emblematic of what this book has been from the beginning: An advertisement for the monthly x-books.
So, uneven overall, but the gems here are stories #1 and #3, which make this a well-above average comic.