Chuck Austen clearly isn't trying to tell a story about mutants or Magneto. He's not offering a deconstruction of the super-hero genre or a tribute to X-Men stories of yesteryear. The point here is a political one, as Austen uses thiese colorful characters to pontificate about Sept.11, terrorism and the war in Iraq. This is an ambitious move on Austen's part, given the subject matter and his far-from subtle incorporation of it into a scenario that serves as an unlikely soapbox. The problem is that he doesn't pull it off. The gaudy nature of the characters and over-the-top characterizations seem to belittle the real-world issues at the heart of the script. The idyllic yet stiff nature of the figures and an unusual quality in the colors distance the story from its grounded roots as well.
The children of Magneto -- Polaris, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver -- arrive on Genosha, and survivors of the Sentinel attack bow down before them, the heirs of their deceased leader. Polaris picks up where Professor X left off in his argument that even someone as vile as Magneto merits a tribute, and as the master of magnetism's daughter holds up Magneto as a hero, Xavier suddenly finds himself arguing a contradictory point: that Magneto's actions were wrong, not justified as part of a war between humans and mutants.
The analogies shine through clearly here. The humans killed by Magneto in New York are really those people lying dead under the rubble of the World Trade Center, and they're the U.S. soldiers dispatched by a misguided administration. The dead in Genosha are the victims of the Western world's support of dictators in the 1980s. They're also the Iraqi civilians caught in a battle between two powerful men, and Magneto, Polaris and the Genoshan survivors are an Arab world that's lashing out against an arrogant Western mindset. Austen's analogies aren't subtle, but they're awkward as well, unable to handle the complexities of the socio-political and religious idiosyncracies of a volatile global showdown.
Wolverine played a key role in the first chapter of this brief story arc, but he's relegated to the background in this issue. It makes me wonder why he was incorporated into the story in the first place. Furthermore, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are included here for no apparent reason at all. They serve no purpose, contributing neither to the plot nor the ideas explored in the script.
Larroca seems to try to bring nobility and passion to the two main characters here, Professor X and Polaris. The problem is that the figures come off as rather stiff. This issue is all about talking heads, but Larroca doesn't provide anything visual to keep the eye active and engaged. Furthermore, Udon's colors in this issue add a dream-like, airy quality to the art, and that conflicts with the serious tone of the issues being discussed. The characters discuss ideologies run amok, and there's a harshness and ugliness to the discussion that's lost by the glowing, idllic energy the colors instill in the players.
