For as long as the Mystique title has been around, I've been generally pleased but not wild about it. That seems destined to continue with McKeever at the helm, as he maintains the same blend of light humor and light action with mutant-centric plotlines putting Mystique through her paces as mutant spy for Charles Xavier. In fact, if you didn't read the cover credits, I suspect you wouldn't even know there'd been a changing of the guard, as McKeever maintains the tone and style of Vaughan's work pretty much perfectly, setting up an interesting enough foe for Mystique to take down and hinting at the slow-boil subplots of Mystique's other employer and the tension between her and her "employers" while mixing in plenty of butt-kicking action and PG-rated sexiness at the same time.
I've had a problem from the start with the way Vaughan treats Mystique, as sort of a declawed version of her more ruthless, effective self, and McKeever sticks with (or is stuck with) that characterization as well. This is the woman who once killed the entire X-Men team in brutal and efficient fashion during a training simulation, who masterminded several successful capers before leveraging her way into a federally-appointed position, and her best response to being forced to use non-lethal methods and playing lap dog for Xavier is to mouth a few snarky insults? It's probably necessary to keep Xavier and Forge superheroic for the Marvel Universe, but I find myself constantly wishing that Mystique could be let off her leash a little, as it would give the title a much-needed edge.
That said, this Mystique who substitutes bitchy sarcasm for ruthless efficiency is kind of interesting too. I love the playful banter laced with actual anger that makes up the relationship between Mystique and former lover Forge, and I like seeing Xavier as a heavy capable of keeping tabs on someone like Mystique. I love that Mystique takes on her assignments with a certain joy and playfulness, and I love the interplay between her and Shortpack. I was surprised to see McKeever making allusions to Mystique being bisexual, with her attraction to Helena Carlson, but I was pleased to see it, because it always seemed like such a fitting part of her character for some reason.
Mystique has long been written as Marvel's answer to the TV show Alias. Butt-kicking sexy female spy with plenty of gadgets and a double agent role to boot. However, the series has also been written as generally episodic, as opposed to the intertwining and increasingly intense uber-plotting of Alias, which makes it weaker in some ways and stronger in others. Weaker in that I've always viewed this as pretty much a popcorn read, without much substance or impact or much to say. Stronger because it's easy to pick up at any point and jump onboard. And the episodic plots tend to be pretty imaginative, this one being no exception, as Mystique investigates a company using mutants as tests for its cosmetics. Or, as Mystique puts it in one very effective turn of phrase that indicates how disgusted she is, "Mutants are dying so that humans can look pretty?"
And speaking of pretty, we have the artwork. Manuel Garcia and Raul Fernandez have done terrific work on this title, and that continues with the new writer. In particular, Garcia's work on the action sequences, whether it's a soldier brutally knocking out a victim on the run or a truly spectacular and evocative shot of Mystique jump-kicking a guard's teeth out of his head, the action here is fast-paced and brutal, exactly what it needs to be.
