Amazing X-Men #4 Review

The X-Men have such a long, colorful, and oftentimes sad history together. The team has been through so many incarnations and more than its fair share of deaths. Sometimes it's nice to have an X-book that really delves into that history as it explores the character relationships. And that's an element that Amazing X-Men has been exploiting to, well, amazing effect over the past few months. The fact that Nightcrawler is back, if not technically alive, is only the tip of the iceberg. The way Jason Aaron uses Kurt's return as a way of exploring his history with and importance to the team is what makes this book shine.

The best part of this arc is easily Aaron's flashback to the classic Claremont years, giving readers that extra bit of context that makes the reunions between Nightcrawler and Beast or Nightcrawler and Wolverine that much more special. The latter scene in particular is very well handled. Aaron exploited Kurt's death to great effect back in 2010, and he does the same for his return now. I defy you not to get a little misty when the pivotal splash page featuring Kurt and Logan appears. But it should also be mentioned that this sense of emotion and history works regardless of the reader's exposure to X-Men continuity.

And it's pages like that that showcase Ed McGuinness' true artistic versatility. As much as his art has always been associated with bulging muscles and big, bombastic action, he really can handle emotion and facial work with the best of them when pushed in that direction. Luckily, Aaron pushes.

At this point, the weakest element of this story is its villain. Aaron has improved Azazel as a character, but not necessarily elevated him to the point where he makes for a particularly memorable or imposing threat. And the fact that he doesn't even appear in this issue doesn't help. Hopefully issue #5 can turn things around in that regard.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com