Look, kids - crap!

X4 finally finishes after five excruciating issues, and boy, it doesn't get any better.  As a three-year-old could have predicted, this issue involves Reed and Hank curing the four afflicted X-Men (without any real difficulty or drama) so that they can join the fight and beat the Brood.  And that's it.

This is a mystifyingly dreadful miniseries, a cash-in of the worst order.  It's tempting to assume that Marvel commissioned it in order to have an X-Men/FF tie-in on the shelves when the FF film comes out later that year.  If that's the case, it's all the more remarkable that nobody thought to put any effort into making it good.  With a plot that hovers between formulaic and incompetent, this is one of the worst examples of superhero writing Marvel has published in the last few years.

Incredibly, the issue actually starts drawing attention to its own glaring plot holes.  Somebody points out that Wolverine's adamantium bones really shouldn't be able to stretch, but the point just gets brushed aside.  When Cerebro is wheeled out for the big finish, Emma actually flags up that if they'd just used Cerebro back in issue #1 instead of going on a pointless space expedition, the whole plot could have been averted.  Again, it's unconvincingly brushed aside. 

I suspect the creators view this sort of thing as charmingly self-deprecating.  But if there's one thing this title is sorely lacking, it's charm of any description.  Instead, it just comes across as though the creators are saying "Hey, we know this is crap, but we just don't care."

A stupid and lazy comic, which never should have made it anywhere near a printer.

Rating: D

back | continue