Some unfortunate production problems and rushed artwork mar this chapter of Morrison's New X-Men, but a number of wild ideas and some great character moments help to keep the story strong. "Imperial" has been the best of the New X-Men stories so far, building upon prior events and providing an epic story that has the undeniable energy of Morrison but with more structure than his often-scattered JLA tales.
What has defined Morrison's X-Men run has been a take on the characters that is very different from what has gone before, and is often a lot more unusual. Whether it's the unusual amorality of Emma Frost and her Stepford Cuckoos, the outsider freak persona cultivated by Beak and Angel or the hard-edged attitude shown by Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey, these are characters who definitely seem to live in a post-human world. The transformation of Beast has also been shown to be more than just physical, and this issue provides a strange reversal of the Trish Tilby relationship with another big twist in Beast's new personality. While the changes may be somewhat jarring for longtime fans, they are far more interesting than the somewhat tired cliches that marked the characters throughout the 1990s.
Morrison has also incorporated some of the widescreen style that came about as a result of JLA and The Authority. His villains are living plasma beings or telepathic energy fields, his heroes have miniature suns instead of brains or exist in a sort of hyper-intelligent telepathic colony. The ideas are out there, and they're more imaginative than the "he shoots fire from his hands" types of powers that generally define the genre. I'm particularly pleased by Morrison's take on telepathy, which shows off the immense power of mind control, whether it's commanding an Interstellar Empire to destroy itself and the rest of the galaxy or backing up another person's mind inside your own.
This book shines brightest when Frank Quitely is doing the art chores, but Igor Kordey has generally been a solid substitute. This issue, however, his work looks a bit rushed and cramped, and at times outright ugly. This isn't helped by having a two-page spread broken up by an ad page, making part of the story difficult to read, but that's not the only problem. The faces of the characters are often inconsistent, and a lot of the detail is instead lost in something of an amorphous background mass. The art is still solid in many regards, but storytelling and anatomy problems abound in this issue.
Leaving aside my complaints about the art, however, this is another enjoyable issue of New X-Men. Whether the story is exploring mutant-human relations or just showing off an explosive conflict of mutant powers, this is one of the most imaginative super-hero comics on the market at the moment.
