HAVOK! Will this be the time Havok proves he is the X-Man he always wanted to be? Or will this be as disastrous as the rest of his life? Lets find out in this breakdown which features a triple threat match : X-Men x Sentinels x Reavers! Ding Ding! Lets get it on!
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS :
Astonishing X-Men (2017) #17
Published:
November 21, 2018
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The Reavers and their adaptive technology has taken over the three sentinels. Um great. They now seemingly have straight gangster murdered Warpath and Dazzler. They feel god-like. Well yeah. All three take off with an agenda in mind. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! Dazzler and Warpath are alive! Dazzler shows off a power she had not shown her friends before. She can make people out of essentially hard light. They can’t move or function but they do the trick with idiots like the Reavers. It took a lot out of Dazzler, though.
Havok takes off, but not into the danger. No no, the man took off. The team follows. Colossus tries to talk him into fighting. Havok knows he’s done some stupid stuff recently and with his bad history, well, it doesn’t look good for him. But Beast stops and assesses where the Reavers are headed: The Mansion.
We change to the Xavier Institute. Kitty Pride is phasing out a beam from the Sentinels. She’s calling in ANY available X-Men. Well, she’s – uh – getting an X-Men cover band. Kitty yells at Havok that he can’t use the word X-Men (running joke through the series, not that funny after five issues).
The Reavers are continuing their rampage. They’re using the sentinels and their technology to assume all available mechanical objects and using it against the X-Men. The Reavers cannot figure out how the X-Men are still alive. Boom. Banshee blows a hole through the first Sentinel. It goes down. The Reaver controlling it links to the nanotechnology keeping Banshee essentially upright. He freaks out. He’s losing control. Colossus holds his metal hands over Banshee’s mouth. His hands are almost melting. Dazzler steps up. Colossus let’s Banshee go. Dazzler takes the concussive blasts. Her powers essentially are absorbing sound waves and translating it into kinetic energy. You knew that. She goes binary. She released the energy in the last two Sentinels. Shreds. A win for the issue. Oh – a Reaver got in a good joke. He called Dazzler “bootleg Kesha.”
The X-Men pick off the Reavers as they try to escape the scene. Peter and Kitty have a moment. It’s awkward and terribly written. Banshee doesn’t want to be poked and prodded anymore, he chooses to let Apocalypse’s death seed run its course. I’m sure that’s a reference to another series. There’s no note for it. Banshee takes off.
Dazzler and Havok have a moment. Havok would rather make jokes and have people laugh at him than end up like his brother Scott. Kitty warns them the Feds are there. She lets them borrow Blackbird to escape. General Callahan (who is after the team) is accosted by Kitty Pryde. They exchange words. Havok, who didn’t run, exchanges something else. He gives himself up for the exchange of his team’s freedom. Kitty says they will get him out, they don’t abandon their own. HAVOK FINALLY GOT HER TO ADMIT HE’S OF THEM. Warpath says to Kitty that he’d follow Havok wherever he leads. Which is a far cry from the beginning of the storyline. The issue is the last of Astonishing X-Men.
I really hate to say it, but this issue was awful. Rushed story. Rushed bases being covered. I mean I haven’t liked this team anyways. Dazzler and Warpath are the only two highlights in the issue and the run of this particular team. I can’t find a bit of Havok’s story that was fun to read. Whatever I thought of this team previously was destroyed by this issue.
02/10
BRG
Beta Ray Greg is the Comic Critic for SoBros Network, the ‘Fangtastic 5K 2018 Mr. Irrelevant.’ The man has the single most impressive spreadsheet in existence that is used to document his historic collection. He’s a big time Spider-Verse guy. Follow on Twitter: @BetaRayGreg.
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