Reviewer: Ben Morse
Story Title: “Prisoner of Fire pt. 5 of 6: Liberationâ€
Written by: Chris Claremont
Penciled by: Igor Kordey
Inked by: various
Colored by: Liquid!
Lettered by: Rus Wooton
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics
If there’s one thing comics history and the history of the X-Men franchise specifically has shown, it’s that “mystery†characters, the ones who have shadowy powers/origins/etc., can either propel a book to the top or drag it to the depths of inaccessibility. Wolverine became the poster child for a cool mystery character who captivated fans for years because readers cared about the actual character, the mysteries were just icing on the cake, and they were eventually revealed bit-by-bit, but not too fast. Gambit and Cable are examples of other successes with this, to lesser degrees. At this point, I’d have to label Sage, a lynchpin of Chris Claremont’s run on this title, to be a failure in this regard.
From the start of the series, Sage has been a cipher. Her personality has been dull at best, grating at worst; her stoicism can be annoying and off-putting. Where Wolverine, Gambit and Cable all had a sort of romantic quality to their violent or charming behavior that made you want to know where it came from, Sage is a blank page that you can’t really bring yourself to care much about. Adding to the confusion is the fact that her mutant power is very ill defined and seems to have fallen into that nebulous zone of “she can do whatever we need done to advance the plot.†Apparently her primary power is being able to remember everything she sees and function as some sort of “human computer†(a power right up there with Cypher from the New Mutants’ ability to translate languages as being the most pedestrian power ever), but that doesn’t explain how she was able to miraculously heal Beast (and see an image of his secondary mutation before it happened) back in the first arc of the series, “jumpstart†Slipstream’s latent mutant gene, or pull off all the crazy fighting moves she has.
So given that the “Prisoner of Fire†arc was set from the start to be a spotlight on Sage and her ties to the equally mysterious (but infinitely more intriguing) villain Elias Bogan, I didn’t have high hopes going in. To this point in the arc, Claremont has done a good job of keeping me interested by spreading the spotlight to other characters (especially Bishop and Cannonball) and exploring team dynamics and how all the training somebody like Bishop, Cannonball or Shadowcat has received over the years contributes to how they approach a situation differently. This penultimate chapter, however, fell flat, mostly for one reason: way too much Sage.
Sage’s “origin†(if you want to call it that), her first meeting with Professor Xavier after a very crucial turning point in his life, is both unnecessarily confusing, because it is told in flashbacks interspersed into a dream sequence, and also disappointing in that Sage has apparently always been this dull and unemotional person (a human computer in more ways than one), there was no pivotal event that made her think emotions were a hindrance. The “big secret†from Sage’s past is both out of nowhere and underwhelming; I don’t recall any big build about some dark secret from years gone by being the reason why Sage doesn’t trust her teammates enough to let them in on her plans, I just thought that was part of her irritating personality, which shows how poorly she has been handled.
This issue is not all bad, however. I will praise Claremont for something I criticized Judd Winick for in one of my past reviews: he is among the best at using guest stars in an ensemble book, working them organically into the plot and making them useful without having them overwhelm the main characters. His use of Shadowcat and the former New Mutants that have populated this arc has been a pleasure, as they seem like a natural part of the bigger supporting cast, but also a special treat. The revelatory “surprise†guest star revealed at the end of the issue was one I saw coming since the beginning of the arc, but a nice choice nonetheless, and obviously a pivotal part of the upcoming “Reload†event.
If this is the last we hear of Bogan and his background, I will be very disappointed. Claremont did the same thing with Vargas in the first few arcs of X-Treme, building up this very powerful and mysterious character and then just writing him out of the book without any big reveal, but that was almost forgivable, because Vargas was almost a force of nature type character that didn’t really need an origin, and also because his “ending†was left open-ended enough that he could come back. With Bogan, he’s a manipulator, so we want to know more about him, but his arc has always felt like it would have a definitive payoff and we’d learn more about him sooner rather than later; he has not felt like a “long haul†villain who could pop up again in a few years and we could get his origin then, he’s felt like a guy the X-Men get one shot against, and if they beat him it will have to be for good.
The art is a bit disappointing if only because Igor Kordey had been improving with each issue on the title and seems to slip back a few notches here. I’m not sure if Kordey is entirely to blame, as X-Treme has been coming out weekly or bi-weekly for months now and Marvel may just have been asking too much of him, regardless of his reputation for being able to draw quickly.
A poor ending to an arc that had a lot of potential and was going well up to this point. I don’t expect next issue to be anything more than an aftermath “picking up the pieces†issue because the big battle already took place and as much as I want to learn more about Bogan, it really should have taken place this month, not next.
