Every so often a week comes along where all of the X-books are mid-storyline and, strictly speaking, the X-Axis format doesn't actually require me to review any of them.  This is such a week.  But it wouldn't be the X-Axis if I skipped the X-books altogether, so for this week's token contribution, let's check in on Son of M, if only because I've reviewed all the other possible books much more recently.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the M-Day storyline is the haphazard way in which the fallout has been handled.  There are plenty of obvious major stories which should be coming out of this plot but none of the writers on the core titles seem to have any inclination to write them.  So the fate of the hapless ex-mutant masses has been bounced into Generation M; the reduced circumstances of the surviving mutants are shunted into the 198 miniseries; and the glaringly obvious story of somebody trying to reverse the effects is banished to Son of M.  It represents a bizarre sort of compromise where Marvel are running the stories that need to be run, but only as a sort of grudging marginalia.

Nonetheless, David Hine and Roy Allen Martinez's Son of M has turned out to be a strong title.  The concept is wonderfully straightforward.  Quicksilver has lost his powers on M-Day.  Of course, his massive and insecure ego can't handle life as a normal human, besides which he has no idea how to live normally.  So he sets out to restore his powers by stealing the Terrigen Mists from the Inhumans - and duly succeeds.  Simply restoring Quicksilver's powers would seem like a cop-out, mind you, so Hine dodges that problem by giving Quicksilver new and unnecessarily complex ones.

And I'm not kidding about complex.  Quicksilver now has the sort of powers that ought to come with an explanatory flowchart.  As the recap page puts it:-

"By vibrating the molecules of his own body at unbelievable speed, he is able to travel forwards through time.  After a limited period, he automatically returns to the exact moment from which he departed but to whatever physical location he reached while in the future.  His also able to bring back inanimate objects."

This is the easily-digestible version, and it still feels like it ought to culminate in an instruction to throw 4d20.  It just about works in this series, where Hine is having fun creating paradoxical time loops, but it's going to be a horrible chore for any future writers, assuming he keeps his powers beyond this series.  Which isn't necessarily going to be the case, I suspect.

Convoluted powers aside, though, the creators are doing a good job of portraying Pietro as someone who seems utterly convinced that he's acting out of charity to restore everyone's birthright, even though it's plain that he's really searching for a justification for his own actions.  Pietro may well genuinely believe that he's doing good, but we all know it's not his real motivation here.  He's a selfish character rationalising his actions as heroic.  To the book's credit, it gets this over without ever spelling it out, and keeps Pietro as a sympathetic figure.  We know he's got it horribly wrong, but it's understandable how he's talked himself into this.

Despite the sometimes excessive convolutions of the plot, this central idea comes across very strongly.  It's a great character story for Quicksilver, as well as a much-needed series that shows somebody trying to reverse M-Day.  All told, a success.

Rating: A-

back | continue