X-Men: Messiah Complex | Mike Carey, Ed Brubaker, ...

X-Men: Messiah Complex | Mike Carey, Ed Brubaker, ... | Review from a long time X-Men fan

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X-Men: Messiah Com...

	X-Men: Messiah Complex Mike Carey, Ed Brubaker, ... Marvel Comics, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A new comic masterpiece

This book has the latest battle between the X-men and the terrible future, the story begins with the first new mutant since "M-DAY" and all the people (purifiers, predator x, marauderers, Mr. Sinester and X-men) who has an agenda with the new born. The art is relly good, and the structure of the arc is perfect, and besides is one of the fierst X-men event where Cyclops gtes the respect as a leader that he deserves, and I asure you that this is a MUST HAVE.

Review from a long time X-Men fan

I have been reading X-Men comics since the early 90s. A lot of the X-Men stories the last few years have been sub-par to say the least. This felt like a return to the X-Men I grew to love so many years ago. Since Messiah Complex, the X-Men seem to have gotten much better. I would highly suggest picking this up to any X-Men fan.

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Mediocre, like any Marvel X-Men crossover

First, let me say that Messiah Complex is a good crossover, but considering Marvel's track-record, that isn't saying much. Generally, the last good crossover was X-Cutioner's Song and Age of Apocalypse, and those were back in the early-to-mid 90's. Messiah Complex follows a similar structure/template, and generally gets the same results.

Like any crossover though, it carries over many faults. For one, I felt that the New Mutants were jammed into the book. I felt the story would have been stronger and tighter if they were not included.

If you don't read all the books regularly, it'll just seem like they are too many characters to keep track of. Even if you know all the characters, you'll get the impression that most characters don't get any air-time. For example, despite Mystique being on the front cover... there is only 10 or so pages featuring her. Mr. Sinister was supposed to play a big part in the story it seemed... and he hardly gets any dialog at all.

X-Factor is another group that had very little to do with this story. Ironically, unlike X-Cutioner's Song, you can tell the crossover plotters tried very hard to give X-Factor a reason to be there. I enjoyed their plots well enough, and once again, Peter David is forced to stop what stories he is doing in favour of going along with the X-Men's plans. Fortunately, Messiah Complex is better off than X-Cutioner's Song.

The art in this book is mixed. I generally thought the art and style was fairly consistent through most of the book (Uncanny X-Men and X-Men issues being the best)... except for the issues with the New Mutants, which are featured in a "manga" style. I'm sorry, but 1/4 of the book being manga completely breaks up the book. Even worse, some of the characters really look terrible, like Gambit. Transitions between issues featuring the same locals and characters also look extremely odd. This isn't a style that works in my opinion, and the book suffers for it.

One thing Messiah Complex gets right is that the story is simple, unlike many other crossovers. It takes 13 issues to get the story across, so the pacing is a little slow, and action sequences tend to drag on longer than they need to... but at least it's not an incoherent mess.

Lastly, I don't think the book achieved a sense of scale or purpose at the end. I won't spoil anything, but the end feels anti-climatic. It doesn't feel like any real change has occurred, or that the events that happen in this book actually matter. In fact, one month after this book was published, Marvel has already retroactively changed the most controversial aspect of the book, thus completely eliminating the importance of the final 2 pages of the book! Marvel, why should the reader care if you it's not permanent and has no importance?

Generally, the story is good... but it doesn't really match something like Morrison's run, or something like that. It's worth a read - just don't expect much. I don't understand the 4- and 5-star reviews. I give it 2.5 stars.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4

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