About Heroes

Author: Ed Brubaker
Layouts: Trevor Hairsine
Finishes: Scott Hanna
Cover: Marc Silvestri

Being one of the strongest psychics in the world must be kick-ass! You can mind-wipe any little detail out of someone's head. Make them forget certain events never happened that actually did. Having a character like this is a blessing to the X-writers; it's really amazing they didn't do it as often or maybe it was because they didn't have to, to make a good story. Brubaker again does a pretty decent job of throwing a bit of continuity to the sides to make room for his story. Finally Trevor Hairsine has stepped down as penciler and just has the job of being a layout artist. I've never been that big a fan of Harirsine so it doesn't really bother me that much. Scott Hanna does an amazing job, like always, with his finishes. The art seems clearer and crisp than usual which is a good change from the rushed job that issue 3 was. That cover really makes me miss Silvestri drawing X-men, that was probably my favorite time reading X-men...but I can talk about that somewhere else.

Spoil Free Review:
This will be a bit tricky, but I will try to save the good stuff for the review with spoilers. The tape that Banshee so desperately died for is in the hands of the X-men now. Beast, Wolverine and Nightcrawler sit and watch as events of the past unfold before their very eyes. Ohh yeah, apparently no one besides me gives a shit about Banshee dying. Instead of worrying about retrieving his body, making arrangements for a funeral or telling everyone else (for that matter contacting his own daughter) that he is dead. I'm just not seeing the proper reaction in these characters now that one of their long time friends is dead. The tape reveals that there was another team of X-men that went to rescue the old team from Krakoa. Now I reread Giant Size X-men 1 and I can buy this happening, it never did state a time in between events in that book. We are led to believe something horrible happened to Vulcan, Sway, Petra and Darwin. Fine, I don't have a problem with that....but if that really did happen, then why in fuck's sake did Moira help Xavier find his new X-men and the New Mutants, if it was so devastating for her? I'm sure more answers will be revealed, but I just don't think they will even bother explaining that one.

The new team is trained by Xavier only in their minds, which is a nice trick that had never been used before. Now that trick could have had repercussions, such as: yes their minds are ready, but the body could have certain side effects. This might be the reason why Xavier never used the trick again. That is just a theory, but still a nice idea. It’s amazing that in one issue the new X-men get costumes and it took the New Mutants ohh only 55 issues to earn their costumes. Just another thing I wanted to comment on is Kurt and Moira keep loosing and gaining their accents, but I think Brubaker is just getting comfortable with the characters.
Click here to read the review with spoilers.