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X-Treme X-Men # 025
"God Loves, Man Kills II"
Part 1 of 6 |
Rating:
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Writer:
Chris Claremont
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Penciller:
Igor Kordey
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Key Events
- First appearance of William Stryker in main continuity
Questions Raised
- Kitty's killed before? Who and when?
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Inker:
Scott Hanna
| Colours:
Liquid! |
Letterer:
Tom Orzechowski
| Editor:
Mike Raicht |
EIC:
Joe Quesada
| Date:
July 2003 |
| Featuring:
Storm, Bishop, Sage, Cannonball, Wolverine, Kitty |
| Versus:
Stryker, Deathstrike, Stryker's flunkies |
Quick Synopsis:
William Stryker is being moved from the west coast to the east. He's under strictest security, but it's not tight enough to keep out Lady Deathstrike. She butchers the flight crew and places a fake distress call identifying the X-Men as the attackers. Moving through the plane, killing everyone in sight, she comes at least to Stryker. She frees him and the two embrace. Deathstrike missed one of the humans though, and he fires at them, missing and taking out a window. The cabin starts to decompress and debris hits the engine. Deathstrikes assures Stryker that she has a contingency plan, and the plane explodes. In Kentucky, Bishop, Sage and Wolverine are watching Storm and Cannonball play tag. Sam manages to tag Ororo, but she turns the tables on him. Sage interrupts the games to report that Stryker's plane has crashed and that the X-Men are being blamed. At school in Chicago, Kitty is having a session with her therapist. Hearing Stryker's name is revisiting painful memories. She thinks about Peter and Illyana, and confesses that she's killed before. The X-Men arrive on the scene to search for clues. Storm keeps the weather in the mountains bad enough to prevent any humans from interrupting their work. Cannonball finds a body and Wolverine says he knows who killed him. Sage tries to contact Storm with the information, but they're attacked before they can report. All three are incapacitated, but the soldiers aren't there to take prisoners. Kitty's closing up the bar when she's taken by surprise. Deathstrike asks Stryker if Kitty will do, and he says that she's perfect.
Full Synopsis:
William Stryker is on the move, although still in Federal custody. Quite strong custody, in fact -- he has an entire plane to himself, and a dozen or more armed guards. Attempting genocide, even of mutants, will get you that. The crew discuss what they'll be doing for their upcoming leave, but the reverie is disturbed by set of deadly claws. Lady Deathstrike calmly wipes the blood from her hands as she makes a radio call identifing the X-Men as the attackers.
The carnage moves throughout the plane, guards falling left and right, until Deathstrike is face to face with Stryker. He quotes scripture as she frees him and sheds her faux guard uniform. The two hug in greeting, unaware that one guard is still breathing. He aims his shotgun at them and shouts a warning. He receives a ninja star to the face for his trouble. He is able to get off a wild shot as he dies, and it takes out a window, decompressing the cabin. Deathstrike holds on to Stryker for dear life as the bodies fly out of the door. Debris hits one of the engines, and the plane starts to lurch, spiraling towards earth. Stryker hopes that Deathstrike has a contingency plan as the plane explodes.
In Kentucky, Bishop, Sage and Wolverine are enjoying the view from the Cumberland Mountains. They soon have additional entertainment in the form of an early morning training exercise for Storm and Cannonball. Sam tries to use his knowledge of the area to his advantage, even managing to tag Storm, but she quickly turns the tables on him, to the delight of Wolverine. The party is soon over however as Sage gets reports that Stryker's plane has crashed and the X-Men are being blamed.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, Kitty is in therapy with her doctor, Maureen Lyszinski. Stryker's return to the news is bothering her as well, and she's trying to work through her feelings. She's faced Stryker personally and knows exactly what he would do, if given half the chance. Reminiscing about that time in her life also brings memories of Peter and Illyana to the surface. Kitty confesses that she's killed someone before to save a friend, and she knows that she could do it again.
The X-Men have moved to another mountain range, searching the Rockies for evidence from the plane crash. Unfortunately, most of it is buried in tons of snow and rock, so they aren't having much luck. Storm finds this very convenient. As the X-Men uncover the first bodies, Manoli is reporting on television that the Xavier Institute is being practically bombarded by Federal authorities demanding information on the crash. Unfortunately crash investigators are unable to make much progress due to extremely bad weather. It is suspected that mutants are behind this as well. On this point, they're right.
Sam wants to bury one of the bodies they've found, but Wolverine stops him to further examine it for clues. He notices that the body was found 10 miles from the crash site, which means that it fell out of the plane. The recognizable claw marks confirm that the fall isn't what killed him. Before Sage can alert Storm and Bishop, a projectile zooms towards them. Logan detects it just in time, and shoves Sam into Sage, ordering him to start blasting.
The projectile explodes, spraying the area with hundreds of lethal darts. The darts rip through trees, the explosion decimating the landscape. Sam was able to start using his power, making himself invulnerable while he acted as a living shield for Sage, but the blast hit him before he could get airborne. He looks around for Sage and becomes entangled in a net. Soldiers surround him, impressed that he survived the explosion. That's nowhere near as impressive as the fact that Wolverine survived, despite being impaled by a half-dozen darts. He leaps at the soldiers, claws extended, but they hit him with some sort of tar paint balls and he is unable to move. Sage watches from the cover of nearby trees and scans the soldiers. They're professionals, and they were waiting for the X-Men. She doesn't get the opportunity to share this revelation, as she is taken out from behind by one of the soldiers. He drags an unconscious Sage to the other X-Men. Unfortunately, the soldiers aren't there to take prisoners.
Back in Chicago, at the Belles of Hell club, Kitty tells her boss to go ahead and go, she'll close up. She bitterly spits comments back at the television interview while cleaning up, and doesn't for a second see the blast that knocks her out. Deathstrike asks if this is the one Stryker wants. He replies that she's perfect.
| Review:
It's a shame that he was made to do it at all, but if anybody was going to do a sequel to God Loves, Man Kills, it simply had to be Claremont. Overall, I found this issue to be average. I very much enjoyed seeing Sam integrating well with the group, and any appearance of Kitty is one to be savoured. Knowing that Claremont was pushed into writing this to coincide with the movie release did somewhat sour the experience for me unfortunately, and the departure of Salvador Larroca didn't help either. But this issue does refocus the book on what was always one of its strong points: the X-Men's main villain doesn't have to be super powered or from another dimension; the truly terrifying, horrible enemies are found at home, right in our back yard. Any time the X-Men confront their true nemesis is a great experience.
Which doesn't mean that the issue doesn't have its moments, the best of which has got to be the dialogue between Kitty and her therapist. Kitty is probably the most normal, screwed-up person in the books. She's only just become an adult, and she's already buried her first love, her best friend, her father, countless other friends and teammates and, to use the colloquialism, saved the world more times than you've had hot dinners. She's been to outer space and fought aliens, she's faced the most dangerous people on the planet, she's been grievously injured ... And she's not yet even 20. The scene is only three pages long, but it is easily the one that stays with me most after the book has been closed.
Luckily, it was also the best drawn sequence out of the lot. Igor Kordey is, without a doubt, not Salvador, and it's difficult to not hold that against him as he takes over pencilling for the book. He does show potential though, and my fingers are crossed that his art will improve (or grow on me) with future issues.
There seemed a decided lack of prevelant "Claremontisms" in this issue, with way fewer narration boxes than is typical for an issue with his name on it. My jury is still out on if this is a good or bad thing, but either way, it worked fairly well for this particular issue. I find myself awaiting the next issue somewhat anxiously. I would like clarification on who Kitty has killed (I've been wracking my brain on this one and keep coming up empty, although I admit that my 18+ month hiatus from the books does not give me the encylopaediac knowledge I once possessed), information on what Stryker wants with her, and Rogue's return. No, that has nothing to do with this storyline directly, but every issue that passes is one closer to her coming back, and that's a good thing.
| Quotes:
- Stryker: Is this part of the plan?
Deathstrike: Don't be an ass!
- Cannonball: Gotcha!
Storm: Very nice. But I'm not quite THAT easy.
- Kitty: I could walk through WALLS, Maureen. At home, that made me a freak. Among the X-Men, I was normal. I thought it was this great adventure. I had no idea.
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