Mystique begins its second storyline, and like all the other Tsunami books, it gets a nice metallic ink cover to go with the event.

Before I move on to the actual story, a couple of thoughts on that.  One, the Tsunami books have nothing in common.  There is nothing to be gained by promoting them as a line.  If anything, that approach has led readers to see them as an indistinguishable mulch and made it harder for books like Runaways and Sentinel to break out and establish an identity of their own.  Two, does anyone really care about metallic ink?  It just looks purple.

Brian Vaughan seems to be structuring Mystique primarily for the trade paperbacks, which is fair enough.  However, it does mean that this opening chapter finds itself doing a fair amount of recapping.  After all if you're reading this in the TPB format, it might have been six months since you looked at the last issue.  So while it's setting up its new storyline - dangerous bioweapon in South Africa which Mystique must recover - the issue does spend an awful lot of time repeating the entire set-up of the series.  I can see why it's there, but it does seem a bit much in the context of the monthly series.  It's just one of those areas where the requirements of the two formats are at odds.

Continuing the globetrotting theme, Vaughan starts off this storyline in North Korea before relocating to Johannesberg.  It's got one of those "mission joined in progress" set-ups that James Bond films are so fond of, and I've always liked that gimmick.  Vaughan's continuing to come up with novel ways to use Mystique's shapechanging powers, as well.  It's all perfectly good set-up material, slightly muted by the degree of recapping.

With Jorge Lucas reassigned to Iron Man, Michael Ryan comes on as the new artist.  Ryan's well known to X-books readers from his run with Robert Weinberg on Cable.  He's always been a good solid storyteller, so I'm perfectly comfortable to see him joining the book.  This time round the book appears to have been shot from pencils using those new fangled computer colouring techniques.  Ryan and colourist Matt Milla still seem to be finding their feet as a partnership - there are parts of the issue which seem to have come out darker than intended.  But it's solid work, and Ryan does sell the shapechanging effects rather well.

A bit too much recap for my tastes, but still a comfortably above average title.

Rating: B

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