We don’t trust each, we don’t pull together as a team, we might as well put on the boots and corsets ourselves and get used to calling Bogan “Master” – Shadowcat, proving once again that deep down Chris Claremont is a dirty old man….
Rogue, Shadowcat, Magma, and Sage launch a surprise attack on the underground headquarters of the evil telepathic mutant Elias Bogan. Unfortunately, after sending Magma away so that she can explode the base like a volcano if they fail to stop Bogan the trio is ambushed by the minions of the self-described “mutant predatorâ€. This leads to a classical good news-bad news moment: good moment is that Gambit is able to trip Skids and take out all of Bogan’s mind controlled thralls while the bad news is that Magma has been possessed by Bogan and unleashes a nasty fire assault upon Sage as the leather-clad deux-de-machina attempts to destroy a critical artifact that more than likely holds the secret of the villainous Bogan inside of it.
OK, a good issue and great artwork from Igor Kordey. It is a complete and utter shame that he’s been given the boot by Marvel from Excalibur. His art here is excellent and it is going to be a huge loss to the X-Men franchise that he’s not going to be around anymore.
Meanwhile Claremont’s writing still is tolerable with this arc, though this is mainly due to the fact that Claremont has brought out half of the New Mutant roster for the storyline. His writing of Shadowcat and Rogue at the beginning works well and actually comes off as a conversation that two people in their positions might have. It is a shame that Claremont never had the chance to give the two characters time together in his various comics, since as we have seen in X-Men Evolution that there is infinite potential for character interaction between the troublemaking southern girl and her younger, big-city female friend.
Bogan meanwhile continues to impress as a villain as Claremont has given the telepathic predator more development and personality than he gave the Shadow King in all of the years that he has written the X-Men. It is a shame though that Claremont had to link the character to Sage though, as Sage definitely is the weakest link in X-Treme X-Men.
