X-Men: Gold #3 Review - Marvel Monday

X-Men Gold #3 Review

 

Writer: Marc Guggenheim

Art Team: Ardian Syaf

Marvel Comics

Release Date: May 3, 2017

Cover Price: $3.99

Brotherhood of Not So Evil Pushovers

X-Men: Gold’s last issue introduced us to the team of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants a little further, while also showing, that for the most part this group of villains could be dealt with by one X-Men alone, and an ‘Old’ one at that, after an impressive initial display of their powers.  So let’s see here how the X-Men Gold team will ultimately wrap up all their lose ends, in the finale to this first three part story, and see if title can grab a little bit of my attention back on their latest journey.

The issue starts presumably after Old Man Logan alerted the other members in team Gold to his whereabouts, as he continues mixing it up with the Brotherhood. After his brief moment of victory last issue, hes eventually stricken down by Amara, as our favorite grumpy old man is covered in flames once again.

Back at the X-Mansion, Kitty prepares a team of X-Men for a rescue effort to get back Old Man Logan. Rockslide and Armor are chosen to accompany the familiar faces in the Gold team, as they board the Blackbird, setting off for the Brotherhoods base of operations. Upon arrival they are quickly confronted by a team of the Evil Mutants who now have a Mesmero mind controlled Old Man Logan on their side.

A battle rages on throughout act two of our story, with the highlight our the issue being the art of Syaf, including some strong character design and fluent action scenes. Despite the initial hubbub and controversy about the art it has remained a fairly consistent strength of the book thus far. 

While all the beautiful fisticuffs grab the headlines the real battle rages on mentally between the two telepaths Prestige and Mesmero. Prestige tries to alleviate the  ‘psy-shielding’ and Mesmero’s control of Logan. Despite his dour demeanor Mesmero is no match at all for Prestige, who quickly handles the supposed orchestrator of these events.

As our X-Men attempt to clean up any loose ends, Kitty confronts Amara, who appears totally lost and confused from what appears to be exhaustive mind control. She refuses the help of Kitty at first, who instructs the rest of the X-Men team to take off, as she saves, by phasing, Amara and herself from a final Brotherhood poly, a bomb that self-destructs the teams base. 

Our issue concludes with the X-Men handing over the Brotherhood to S.H.I.E.L.D. authorities but also finding out their work isn’t quite done yet. The team confronts the one final person responsible for all these Brotherhood attacks, and problems to begin with, which happens to be Ms. Nance, the talking head back from the previous issues, who seems to have been funding and supporting the Brotherhood to further her mutant agenda.  The X-Men leave her with a threat to cut the shit, accompanied with a minor display of power, as our issue concludes with Kitty iterating just who Ms. Nance is messing with by stating “we’re the X-Men” on her way out.

Overall I find that there is nothing inherently wrong with X-Men: Gold as a title, the story is alright, and the art is attractive to look at but I was just expecting more from the latest relaunch I guess.  This just felt like a general throwaway generic X-Men story that could have been told with any characters in the X lineup which just leaves it feeling to generic for my tastes.  In order to commit to a title releasing twice a month I have to really be on board with what I’m being sold, and aside from Kitty Pride saving the team twice in amazing displays of power, I don’t have much to rest my hat on yet concerning reasons to suggest buying this title.

Bits and Pieces

X-Men: Gold is a book that I find to be telling just generic X-Men stories, with above average art, and not really having a solid storyline going forward I find myself investing in or committing to purchase twice per month. Now that our opening three part story is out of the way I hope we can get down to more serious business highlighting the strengths of the characters on our team moving forward.

6.5/10