During a Burning Man-like festival, an unexpected supercell storm wipes
out dozens of revelers and leaves even more injured. Naturally, Storm and her
team of X-Men are called in to investigate this unusual weather occurrence. At
the same time at the Jean Grey School, Krakoa falls ill, leaving Beast and
Jubilee to root out the cause of his mysterious sickness.
X-Men Volume 5: The Burning World
collects issues #23-26 of X-Men,
written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Roland Boschi.
From its very first issue, X-Men has
been plagued by spotty writing and has struggled with finding its identity
among a sea of X-Men related titles. After its first three lackluster story
arcs and an improved fourth, fan-favourite writer G. Willow Wilson was brought
in to write the series’ finale. Like Marc Guggenheim before her, Wilson excels
at dialogue and giving each character her own unique tone. This creates a
compelling dynamic that provides each character with a distinctive role within
the team. Storm is the stoic leader, Psylocke is the relentless warrior, Monet
is the snarky tank, Rachel is the empathic psychic powerhouse, and Jubilee is
the comedic everyman. These distinguishing characteristics help to give the
team an identity and enable the reader to relate to the characters involved.
Finally, after just over 20 issues the book has the tone it’s desperately
needed since issue #1.
The story presented in this volume owes much to the 2005 British horror
film The Descent, as it involves its
heroines becoming trapped underground where they must then fight off
otherworldly monsters. It’s nowhere near as brutal as the film or as harrowing,
but it does allow its characters room to develop and gives readers a glimpse of
their inner psyche. For example, we are able to see Storm grieve the
then-recent loss of Wolverine and Monet reflects on the influence her mother
had on her as a child. Though the character development is superior to what
most other writers do month-to-month, the story as a whole fails to provide the
thrills and chills necessary for leaving a lasting impact on the reader. In
truth, it feels like a filler arc that’s meant to re-establish the team’s trust
in one another and lead into something greater. The fact that there wasn’t
anything beyond these issues is a rather depressing letdown.
The quality of this book is further diminished by the muddy pencils of
Roland Boschi. Very seldom are the characters attractive and his anatomy is off
at several points, which gives them look like blobs with jagged edges for
fingers. This is made worse by the seemingly lazy details of each character’s
face, which is rather frustrating since it seems like he put no effort into
making each girl distinctive beyond their hairstyles.
By issue #26 of X-Men, it’s
clear that it never lived up to its full potential. Wilson and her predecessor Guggenheim
both showed how incredibly layered and compelling these characters are, but the
narratives never managed to match that depth. Instead of being a great
all-female alternative to Uncanny X-Men,
X-Men was more like a character-driven
book that focused on a team’s lack of cohesion until the last couple of arcs.
There were a ton of great ideas (like Deathstrike’s Sisterhood from Muertas), but ultimately none of the
creators left a lasting impression with this book. Wilson did an admirable job
in The Burning World in terms of showing
off her impeccable skill at writing dialogue and of understanding the
characters she writes. This book should be recommended to those who are fans of
these five characters since it’s so character-centric. For anyone looking for
something on a more epic, Earth-shattering scale, you might want to stick to
the event titles Marvel seems to push out every other month.
RATING:
B
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