Thursday, January 5, 2012

Comic Book of The Day: Uncanny X-Men #4


X-Men left off with the end of the “Sinister” three part arc. The X-Men find themselves at a bit of a crossroads with the citizens afraid of what they are capable of, but X-Leader Scott Summers (aka Cyclops) believes this to be beneficial, if humans fear the X-Men, they won’t harm mutants. That brings the X-Reader to issue 4. 

SPOILERS BELOW

Issue 4 is one of those one-shot books that are used to keep the title coming out monthly while the writers get ready for the next big arc. The story focuses around a member of the Phalanx, the alien life forms who try to take over the galaxy through the use of a hivemind and turn everybody robotic. This member was captured and systematically tortured by Mr. Sinister for an unspecified amount of time. I’m quite sure unspeakable things were done here to this member of would be conqueror people.

After his escape, and repeated failures to contact his larger collective, he builds a one man Phalanx army made out of himself and people he killed. This is, of course, where the X-Men arrive to stop him. The real tragedy comes when the Phalanx member discovers that he is the last remaining member of his people. That is the true reason he couldn’t contact the hivemind collective. Upon discovery of this, he lowers his shields and allows himself to be killed the X-Men’s attacks.

With this book being a one-shot, it technically isn’t going to have any bearing on the rest of Marvel, or even the X-Men. It’s used to either introduce something that later will be very important, or what I believe to be the reason this time, bridge a gap between two arcs. In this case a villain is taken and shown to be a sympathetic character that I felt sorry for when he was killed. Where my curiosity lies is how does Mr.Sinister benefit from what information he obtained from the Phalanx member? Will this book have any lasting effects on Marvel or the near future? In my personal opinion no, but that remains to be seen.

Andrew M.

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