Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: The Draco Part 2
Written by: Chuck Austen
Penciled by: Philip Tan
Inked by: NA
Colored by: Avalon Studios
Lettered by: Rus Wooton
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics
ATTENTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The following review contains spoilers for New X-Men #146. Now knowing my opinion on spoilers (that if you read a review, you basically forfeit your right to remain “unspoiled”) I have decided to be kind and input a basic spoiler space at the very beginning of the review. If you don’t want to be spoiled, hit the back button and just don’t read this review. If you want to know or already know (as the info has been out there on the internet since last Wednesday) read on….
Spoilers contained herein
The book starts with a look at Sammy the Squidboy as we discover that he’s being beaten by his dad. In between hits to the face, Sammy has his paternity called into question as daddy dearest calls his mom a whore. Sammy runs from his house and gets telepathically contacted by Carter (whose mom IS a whore and whose dad is probably some poor coma patient Annie committed female rape upon) who brags about stowing away in the Blackbird Jet and how Havok is for all intents and purposes his new dad. Luckily the brat gets caught by some archeologists who haul him off for being in the jungle by himself.
This moves us to Xavier and Nurse Annie giving Polaris “therapy” to get over the fact that she got dumped on her wedding day due to the fact that Chuck Austen has a nurse fetish that he wants his other Mary Sue character to indulge him by sleeping with him.
For what it’s worth, through his treatment of Polaris, Austen has given me a sliver of hope about his upcoming Avengers run because at least Chuck let Polaris throttle Alex and Annie while Kurt Busiek had Vision run away like a scared girl after Wonder Man not only stole his wife, but also BS him with his trademark “Don’t blame me! I had a bad childhood and would I purposely hurt someone I envy?” speech that Simon always uses whenever he does something bad. Then again, he also said he wants to turn the book into a mirror image of the Ultimates, which Marvel desperately needs to realize never is a good thing when it comes to revamping the Avengers…
Lorna states the obvious about Annie’s crappy parenting skills and how her racist attitudes about mutants is going to screw her son up when Xorn makes an appearance to foreshadow this week’s revelation that Xorn is really Magneto under the helmet of his in New X-Men’s #146. Xorn declares his membership in the “We Hate Nurse Annie” club by declaring Annie a racist whose parents were racist flatscans as well. He then states that Annie should be making her son attend classes at the school due to his mutant powers and his use of them on people since he arrived at the mansion. He then sarcastically bashes Xavier for putting Lorna in bondage and reprogramming her so that Xavier can use Alex and Annie as the poster couple for mutant/human cooperation without Lorna blabbing to the media that Annie is a racist and that Alex is a scumbag who dumped her at the alter befoe exiting the room.
They start their psi-scan and Lorna starts flooding Annie and Xavier with images of Lorna shagging Alex. Xavier (who’s got a photo shoot lined up at the end of the week to get Annie and Alex on the cover of Time) takes over Lorna’s mind as we learn that after the events of “Eve of Extinction” Lorna returned to Genosha with one thing on her mind: find out for once and for all if Magneto is her father.
We get to Lorna talking about arranging an independant and blind blood test when the story kicks over the the A-Plot (at long last) as the Uncanny Team (currently consisting of Wolverine, Husk, Jubilee, Havok, Angel, and Iceman) gets hit with exploding arrows as Nightcrawler and the rest of the islanders all teleport to who-knows-where in a blinding flash of light.
Overall, a decent issue with Philip Tan making this issue look like a million bucks. I pray Chuck doesn’t retcon Lorna into being Magneto’s daughter, if only because it would destroy one of the franchise’s most beloved running gags of Lorna, whenever she’s off her rocker, ranting and raving about being Magneto’s daughter.
