Meanwhile, Mystique reaches the midway point on its first storyline. 

I'm a little suspicious about the proliferation of series opening with six-part storylines, which often seems a bit excessive for the first arc.  However, this one seems to have a reason - there are really two parallel stories in the first arc.  It has to tell a story in its own right and also handle the mechanics of getting Mystique into Xavier's employment in the first place.  Six issues seems about right to cover both of those points.

This issue finishes up the job of establishing Mystique's status quo and then returns us to the actual threat which was established back in issue #1.  We're going globetrotting, as Xavier packs Mystique off to Cuba to get rid of its nascent Sentinel programme.  As Xavier points out, Mystique's always had some degree of interest in looking out for other mutants, so it's not like she's going to take these sort of missions through gritted teeth.

The Cuba storyline seems to be mainly steering clear of politics; there's a bit of discussion of how the Cubans feel about mutants given their political beliefs, but really the villains are cast here in a standard "corrupt elements of the government" role.  Vaughan and Lucas turn in a fairly effective sequence with Mystique's arrival in Cuba, including two neat surprises at the end.  It's still basically action movie stuff, though, rather than anything particularly deep.

More interesting is the discussion of quite why Xavier would pack Mystique off on this mission anyway.  He rather unconvincingly denies Mystique's suggestion that he chose her in large part because he's not really all that bothered about sending her off on an extremely dangerous mission where her predecessor got killed.  Clearly he doesn't want to view it that way, but Mystique does seem to be on to something.

It's a solid enough action story combined with some pretty decent character material for Mystique, Xavier and Forge.  The two storylines still seem a bit distant from one another, but it's not a huge flaw.  Entertaining stuff.

Rating: B+

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