Review by Karl Verhoven
So now a £16 paperback merely gathers four comics? It’s barely thick enough to take writing on the spine.
The Quiet Council numbers a dozen members, guiding affairs of Krakoa’s mutant community, and to date Kieron Gillen’s method has been to have each chapter dealing with their activities narrated by a different member. Nightcrawler’s turn comes as the differences between the X-Men, the Avengers and the Eternals that ended Vol. 1 have been settled. Unfortunately that evolved into judgement by the Celestials, and their verdict also occupies the opening chapter. Equally unfortunately, as good as Gillen is, he’s providing a single chapter of a crossover events that sprawls all over the place, and his focus on Nightcrawler isn’t enough to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear as your 19th century ancestors used to say.
Everything looks to be in a bad way by the end of the opening chapter, but that’s all fixed somewhere else, which is unsatisfactory. That’s followed by a playful trip back to the past investigating the three Quiet Council members who’d mastered death before Krakoa, and when the present again manifests the Celestial problem is forgotten.
Gillen’s opening volume was a positive treasure box of clever plotting, and when not dealing with crossovers that continues here, comments about the foundation of the X-Men thrown in passing as part of Professor X’s narration. “There were so many mutants out there”, he muses, “but I didn’t pick them. I gathered people who could do a job”. There’s one killer cliffhanger ending to that chapter, but it exemplifies a problem throughout the collection of Gillen either setting up problems for others to solve, or clearing up someone else’s mess, as it’s resolved somewhere before Vol. 3 begins. That being the case, inordinately complicated plots involving time and genetic manipulation would perhaps be best saved for another time. As an intellectual exercise a complex Groundhog Day chapter where variations on the same event are run through time and again impresses, but doesn’t provide the most satisfying reading overall. Lucas Werneck’s immaculate variations on a theme provide the sample art.
Werneck is the anchor drawing all but one of the chapters here, most a spectacular mix of portraits and action, personality and grace. As before Michele Bandini contributes a single chapter, and it’s a step up, no longer looking out of place.
With twelve members of the Quiet Council Gillen was always going to have favourites, and it’s Mister Sinister who appeals to him the most. When well written, the quirky, sardonic madness of his speech patterns provides a delight in any incarnation, and Gillen obviously enjoys the amoral loose cannon that he is. It’s also noticeable that he has little to say about some characters, the Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde narrations less revealing.
Immortal X-Men Vol. 2 is very good in places and very clever sometimes, but fatally compromised by Marvel’s greed in hoping you’ll pick up other books to discover what’s happened between chapters. Does it ever occur to the marketing people that readers might just not bother with any of it, especially at that extortionate price?
