A rather thankless collection of short stories, biding their time until it gets to a more interesting section of the X-Men’s timeline. Some important things happen but nothing that is commensurate with the $18 list price. We get introduced to the new X-Cutioner but without any explanation of how he got his gear or his martial arts skill, just his beef. He successfully lays out our heroes until he doesn’t, which is par for the course. Kitty Pride is now a ninja so yay! Glad she’s in charge! How soon until she takes over The Hand? They spend an issue fighting Congress over a poorly-veiled Mutant analogue to Trump’s Anti-Immigration law. Kitty makes a great case for the Mutants, but an attack by bad Mutants on the hearing seals the deal. Kitty and Piotr spend at lot of time throughout this volume denying that they have the hots for each other, but we all know it’s inevitable. The largest part of this volume is taken up with a Russian mob story, as the aforementioned Hand and a bunch of Ivans resurrect cold war baddie Omega Red. Barely hanging on to life through his vampiric tentacles, Omega Red and his mob handlers (including never-before-mentioned uncle to Colossus and Magik, Anatoly Rasputin) need Magik to come finish the job of bringing him all the way back so that they can use him to be bastards. Old Man Logan eventually gives him the claws so that makes the second time that OML has done Red in. Lastly, we get a set-up chapter about former Brotherhood of Evil Mutant cohort Kleevus (actually named Kolgoroth), a bad-tempered demon-looking guy that the X-ies have been keeping in their dungeon. The X-Cutioner lets him go during the first issue here and now we find out that he is not a Mutant but some sort of interdimensional Mike Pence, an exile from a deposed evangelist junta that now has got power back and looks forward to their leader returning. DUN DUN DUUUNNNNN!!!
Volume ends with interdimensional video entrepreneur Mojo setting his sights on the X-Men again, so it looks like writer Marc Guggenheim finally gets to deliver a full story in the next volume.
All told, this is a pretty weak volume for the X-Men; the art is mostly good but the writing seems very Claremont-esque. Now, I liked what Claremont did with the X-Men but he will NEVER be my favorite of their writers. Everything that he does seems so overwrought and his dialogue comes off as very stilted, especially when compared to runs by Bendis, Morrison, and Whedon. Guggenheim is OK but, as a writer for Law & Order, I expected more. Then again, he is partially responsible for the Green Lantern movie, and if you can’t make Ryan Reynolds charming and heroic, then something’s wrong here.
OK, but hardly worth the cover. For completists only.