X-Men Divided We Stand #2 (OF 2)

This issue and the last seem to be a mixed exercise of both clearing the decks for a new direction within the X books and establishing a sense of gravity to an event that long-time readers like myself are a little confused by the severity of.  The Dream, as it has been expressed in the last 40 plus years of publishing, is dead and to symbolize this the characters all react to the Mansion's destruction like a physical blow.  The course the X-men were on is as shattered as the foundations of the house Xavier built.  There is a simplicity in this that I love but therein also lies my problem: the mansion being destroyed is routine for these people.  It's almost seasonal for them, so why is this particular mansion destruction so much worse than the last gazillion times a bad guy has come along and blew the place up? 

If I remove that question and just take it at face value I find I enjoy the book quite a bit.  Yet for all the enjoyable moments within lies the fact that I still cannot understand the gravity of this particular event versus the last thousand they have endured and grown from, saying to me that this story, although it could eventually blossom into a treasured moment in X-men history, has been formed with feet of clay.  So what about the stories themselves:

LIGHTS OUT seems like an epilogue to the ENDANGERED SPECIES mini that ran through the x-line last year.  Scot Eaton draws a very good cat-looking Beast giving him an almost presidential Teddy Roosevelt look.  Elements of the Morrison run are acknowledged and like I said earlier, I don't know why this time Hank has to destroy everything instead of just collecting it and starting over anywhere else considering his considerable ties to the rest of the MU.  For that matter a man intent on reversing M-Day might do well to keep the 10 odd years worth of specialized research he is destroying but it's well done all the same.

PLANTING SEEDS is a mixed bag for me.  Too begin with I have really never enjoyed the Limbo aspects of Illyana and don't see at all what they have to do with the themes of the X-men but despite remembering her dying right around the time when I stopped reading comics for a while she's apparently back which this story seems to be reminding us.  For those that do miss her there is a plot thread established for her to come back I suppose if enough people write in demanding her.  Of all the stories in this anthology this felt the most shoe-horned in.

THE HOLE, sweet Jesus does being Alex Summer suck.  That poor sob has probably one of the worst histories of any fictional character I can think of and it seems like there is an unspoken mandate in the X-office that Alex must always be either a mess or have made a mess of a situation.  Gabriel is a problematic villain for me because he is so one-dimensional and characters that have been retro-fitted into continuity are a tough sell to begin with (*cough* Sentry *cough*).  There is a history there with the X-men but it's a history largely off panel with flashback recollections in the place of natural character progression so Alex's decision to rip out the heart of a man he hardly even knows seems not only forced but hollow.  Why Gabriel would be getting a kick out of torturing a brother he hardly knows is likewise problematic.   Seems his real beef would be with Xavier who lied as much to his team as he did Alex and Scott's.  The new baby making Havok suddenly create powers that on page one he stated he couldn't access through the "power of hope" make this my least favorite of the stories.

IDEE FIXE is another thing altogether.  On the surface it kind of reads like an explanation of how someone who was shot in one book could be in Cable so soon afterwards but it reads with a constant drumming of madness like Poe's The Black Cat in a way with Cable's time tech substituting in for Forge's madness to fixate on.  The idea of Forge's powers lend themselves nicely to these kind of psychological stories and of the entire anthology I found this one to tie with LIGHTS OUT as the strongest of the piece.

THE SUN ALSO SETS is a good capper for the book demonstrating the different eras of the New Mutants.  Seems like there have been three different eras of New Mutants, the originals which included Dani Moonstar here (sporting a very nice iMac G5 I must say), Generation X with Jubilee and Skin, and then the New X-men consisting of a cast of largely anime looking characters in my opinion.  It's the kind of X story where characters react to an event and talk about how god-awful having their powers are and yadda yadda yadda but the thing that I found interesting about this particular story is that although Dani is doing the prerequisite Claremont mantras of how being beat to hell time and again makes you a strong person Nori is taking a rather fresh view from the established tone that seems pessimistic, almost to the point of existential.  They end overlooking a nice scene with Dani saying that the glass is half full and Nori basically implying that it's all pointless in the end.  After the way her classmates have been dumped by the very adults that were charged in protecting them as these stories imply, I'm inclined to agree with her frankly.   Especially with 198 mutants left in the world it seems highly irresponsible for someone like Scott who chides his mentor for not caring enough to turn his back on the youths in their protection.  In fact it just makes no sense at all when I think about it.

Since before M day the titles have felt aimless.  Although the way we got here maybe be questionable resulting in books such as these, it does feel like the line has a direction again for the first time in ages. 

In short, a strange book with strange themes coming out in a strange time for the X-books.