REVIEWS-New X-Men 139

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (** stars) NEW X-MEN #139, a MARVEL COMICS ongoing series CREDITS: Written by Grant Morrison. Art by Phil Jimenez SYNOPSIS:** After Jean realized that Emma was after Scott exactly who will be the victim in ‘Murder at the Mansion’? Emma’s getting her own book, Jean and Scott are in the movies, so is it…Satan? RELEASED: 04/16/03 COVER PRICE (USA): $2.25 YOUR ALTERNATE REALITY PRICE: $1.91	“… he’s taking a character that was one thing when everyone else handled her and turned her into an actual person”

Review by Lawrence Evans When we left Jean, Scott and Emma the latter two were having a quiet moment (actually, Emma was showing him that when you sleep with a telepath you can sleep with whoever you want) before Jean caught them and got sort of pissy. The Stepford Cuckoos had also told off Emma over the way she got one of them dead during Frank Quitely’s last arc. Morrison has been teasing us with whether Scott and Emma had gotten it on in Hong Kong last year and here we get the definitive answer. We’ve also been teased about the rebirth of the Phoenix and let’s just say that when Jean gets mad it gets a bit warm around her. As Jean deals with Emma she tosses Scott out into the hallway and refuses to let him in as she gets inside Emma’s head and teaches us about her upbringing. Morrison delights us with this as well as Xavier’s and everyone else’s reactions to what’s going on. This also adds some more heft to Emma while making her more complicated as we move on. It all comes down to that night in Hong Kong where we see what happened from two perspectives-Emma and Scott’s. His reaction and challenge to Jean brings us back to the early days of the relaunch when Jean kissed Logan and Scott wondered aloud to Hank whether he even loved her anymore. Scott gets all pissy this time and somehow Morrison gets this to end in a joke as Scott hits the road again. A pretty powerful scene between Emma and Logan ends with an admission that sort of made me look back and say, “Wow”. Morrison has been doing with Emma what Austin is doing over in Uncanny with Cain; he’s taking a character that was one thing when everyone else handled her and turned her into an actual person. She was always this hot chick who screwed with people’s heads while wearing an outfit that left very little to the imagination. Now she’s this hot chick that became who she had to be just to survive but now realizes that by doing so she wasn’t really living at all. When everything is said and done Henry finds a pile of something lying on the floor with a costume wrapped around it which begins the mystery of who died and how? I should also mention that the Jimenez art is quite smashing here. He doesn’t give everyone the rough edges that Quitely gave them. Instead they are angular and a bit more realistically drawn to give them a sense of grace and not just power.

NEW X-MEN © 2003 MARVEL Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.
Review © 2003 Alternate Reality, Inc.