Messiah War Review

An article by Brad    No Comments

I hate time travel.  I hate time travel stories, even the good ones (like the current X-factor story).  Thinking about the ramifications hurt my head, even when it is futuretime traveling.  There is just no need for it.  Unfortunately, the two characters most concerned with the last mutant born, Hope, are time hoppers: Cable and Bishop.

Both chacaretrs were great when first introduced in the 90′s, and both should have been killed off long ago because they are simply annoying and useless.  Cable has some depth, but Bishop… I miss the early Bishop, the kick-ass Bishop, not this bald, whiny, poor excuse for Bishop.

Anyway… this crossover returns Stryfe (Cable’s clone) to the X-Universe.  he was one of the four big baddies from the nineties (also including Apocalypse, Sinister and Magneto).  He was the main bad guy in the Xecutioner Song crossover (which rocked), but he has been pretty much silent since then.

This story finds the X-force Strike team, made up of Wolverine, X-23, Domino, Angel and The Vanisher going into the future to look for Cable and Hope.  They find a dead world and Stryfe, and Angel finds a future, dying version of Apocalypse.

The story wasn’t much of a story.  I liked the current X-force a lot, and I have liked this new, darker series.  But this whole thing seemed like a crossover for the sake of a crossover with no future ramifications except for the cable series.  This is more a continuation of the current cable storyline, with him and Hope jumping further and further into the future, but doesn’t seem like X-force even had to be involved.  it was as if they were included simply to give Stryfe more heroes to fight, making for more battles, and to give Cabal a means to win in the end.

Just as with the Great Fable Crossover, which could have been limited to the Jack of fables book only, this story could probably have been limited to the Cable book alone.

The worst part about this story was the ending.  Again, how it phased Cable and Hope back into their own book was simple.  But how they ended it wit the X-force members… i went back to the first issue to see what they were doing before they were teleported to the future, and then re-read the end of the last book, and I was utterly confused.  And I consider myself an intelligent guy.  It was just too much.  I would rather have seen X-force spend the three months  with their own story and mission, which I loved, instead of being sucked into this.  We’re back to their own story now, but has been time wasted.

The art was good.  In times past, during a crossover like this, the regular artists would take time off, handing it off to lesser artists.  Marvel would hope that the giant crossover and the story itself would keep the readers interested despite poor art.  But the art was good, though the two books have distinctively different styles.

Would i recommend the book?  If you are considering getting the trade paperback for less cash than the individual books, and if you are a fan of X-books, then pick it up when it comes out.  The most important thing is that, for now, it is a self-contained story and you can read it and understand what is happening even if you didn’t follow X-force or Cabal religiously.  Everything is explained and recapped well.

Is it a great story?  No?  But, if you are like me and enjoy seeing X-men out for blood and kicking ass, then give it a whirl.

I can only hope that the events of this book will send out shockwaves that affect the whole X-Universe and not just Cable’s solo book.

[rating=2.5]

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