Reviewer: Jamie Hatton
Story title: Wannabe Part 4
Written by: Joe Quesada
Art by: Joshua Middleton
Colored by: Beaulieu & Middleton
Lettered by: Eliopolos
Editor: Cebulski & Cadenhead
Publisher: Marvel
It saddens me when a title that has promise goes to the wayside. Now I know there are a lot of things that can cause this. Lateness with the writer, the artist, the EIC being hoisted to put some different management in charge… anything can happen and sadly NYX is a victim in all of this.
On another note, this week I got to review NYX #4, and Harley & Ivy #2. Two fun books with dirty dirty girls… I think Chris D. & Daron finally knows how to play to my strong suits.
Story!
Since this book is coming at us five months past its last issue, they were nice enough to toss in a rehash of what’s gone on. Thankfully, since my mind has stopped processing data since I started reading House of Leaves. Anyway, we are told what Kiden has been up to since her disappearance. She spent quite a bit of time learning how to use her powers, as well as bumming it on the street.
We come to realize that for as much as you might hope it’s not true, it seems nobody really cares that Kiden’s gone. Her mother is remarrying, and her brother shows only one panel of true thoughtfulness. Altogether, it was probably a little more realistic than one might expect, but it happens.
Finally, a vision from Kiden’s dead father brings her up to date, where she has saved her teacher and in turn saved X-23.
X-23 explains her side of the whole ‘walk in the room and my john is dead’ story. I’ll leave that part for you to read and interpret as you will, but the story just doesn’t seem believable. If I walked in on a hot, barely legal, gothic, prostitute with protruding claws over a dead body, and she said to me ‘I didn’t do it.’…well, let’s just say that after she made another twenty bucks, she’d be downtown.
Altogether, this story didn’t fit with what we’ve already been given. It has quite a bit to do with the scheduling issue, as this story is now going to have to be read in trade for it to feel as if it has any flow.
Art!
Middleton’s last issue. This brings up a few very interesting questions. Questions, such as whether our new artist, whoever it may be, will be able to give us those cute drugged out Kiden looks, or those come hither catholic school girls. I know that the man likes to draw naughty underage girls. I understand this. I am so sorry that I respect him all the more for it.
Seriously though, the art of NYX was what first drew me to it, as I know many others feel the same way. With Middleton leaving, so leaves quite a bit of what made this book fun. His characters were human looking, his detailing felt like it came right out of a fully rendered cartoon movie.
The scenes of ‘No Time’ in this issue might go down as some of the best art this book has had so far.
Overall!
Hopefully all of the politics behind this title are now free and clear, because it seems like it could be a very fun book. This issue specifically only motivated the plot slightly, and I wasn’t fond of the characterization of Miss Palmer (given that she hasn’t called anybody about her milk-carton Kiden and murdering X-23).
I will look forward to NYX #5, sometime in November.
