Mystique #24

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Reviewer: Iain Burnside (with break-ins by James Hatton)
Story Title: Quiet (Finale)

Written by: Sean McKeever
Penciled by: Manuel Garcia
Inked by: Raul Fernandez
Colored by: Matt Milla
Lettered by: VC’s Rus Wooten
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Dan Buckley

A note: James Hatton here… hi. Iain’s a bit on the off side today – as you will see in a moment. If you start to get completely confused – just suffer through. It’s actually pretty damned amusing, but there is some commentary on the issue mixed in, and I chime in at the end. Cheers.

This review is late.

Not only that, but it is being written one-handed while I am all doped up on morphine following the effects of having a dislocated shoulder snapped back into it’s socket recently. It’s all just a big basket of kittens, really. Skippy, skippy, skippy.

I am warning you now that this review is going to make as ABSOLUTELY LITTLE SENSE AS POSSIBLE and while quite possibly be the worst thing I have ever written. Ever.

I blame Nick Piers for not wanting to step in and repair some of this shit. You had the chance, Nick!!! You had the chance!!! Step away from the pussycat and do my work for me!!! No?? Huh. Kay…

So, yeah, Mystique. Big blue boobies, lots of muscles in tight leather, lotsa guns, lotsa boom, lotsa bang. Cancelled. #24, the summit, the zenith, the nadir, the end of the series… You people can suck so very, very much at times.

Other Marvel books that deserve some attention from the dairy-diet crowd due to cancellation scares….

DISTRICT X
It’s not going to last past HOUSE OF M after every mutant not living in Genosha or Professor Angle’s mansion bites the big one anyway, so if you’re really quick then you could be lucky enough to track down all the issues and get yourself a complete set of an entire run of a bona fide, real-life, legitimate X-Men book! How super swank would THAT be, huh?

SHE-HULK
She’s cancelled but she’s coming back because Dan Slott IS the new Brian Michael Bendis, only funnier and less prone to use Jessica Jones. BTW, how similar was The Outsiders’ old WCW theme tune to Seal’s “Killer”? Uncanny… Anyway, yay for She-Hulk. If you liked Ally McBeal or Sex and the City you’ll love this comic. If you DID like Ally McBeal or Sex and the City then you’d probably rather gouge out your eyes than read a comic, but what the hey. Hang on… I like this comic but HATE Ally McBeal and LOATHE Sex and the City! Vive la mould-breaking!!

GAMBIT
Oh, piss off.

ROGUE
Does it involve lotsa lotsa pictures of Anna Paquin in a corset? No? No? NO?? Well then allow me to present my rebuttal…. BOOBIES!

CABLE/DEADPOOL
My nigger. This book…. This book is so unfathomably excellent. If I were any more secure in my masculinity then I’d get down on my knees and start sucking like I had never sucked before in appreciation for this marvelous effort… not that I have had much experience at sucking in that position… or indeed in any position… but, you know, big guns, Bea Arthur, ninja crap, boobies and the most ferociously platonic male relationship this side of Snitsky/Heidenreich. Buy this book. Or I WILL make you hurt.

NIGHTCRAWLER
No more blue boobies. Just a big blue SCHLONG. And another BIGGER, LONGER, JUST AS BLUE PHALLIC OBJECT SWINGING AROUND HIS BACKDOOR. The dirty bugger. Don’t buy this book unless they miraculously manage to retcon everything else Nightcrawler did during the Austen years.

MARVEL TEAM-UP
Spider-Man, on seeing X-23 for the first time – “Wolverine, good lord! Oh no! What did they do to you???” That is why you need to buy this book. Even better, save your money and buy the Walking Dead trades instead. Robert Kirkman would probably prefer that, you know.

ARANA
No.

So, here’s where Jamie Hatton is going to run in and give us some intelligent commentary to add to the next section of the review…

Jamie says ” HAVE YOU PEOPLE SEEN THE THINGS WE ARE GIVING AWAY! STEAK KNIVES! POP MUSIC COMPILATIONS.. and WIDRO’S SEVERED HEAD… how much would YOU pay for such things.. 99.99!!! NO! 75.99!!!!! .. NO! We are asking for a bl**job and a snickers bar!”

Jamie Hatton. Home of the best Raw recap on the net (but not elsewhere). He also does something with comic books occasionally. Personally, I’ve always liked to think of him as garroting his buttcheeks with them in true Christy Hemme style. He’s certainly got the legs for it. Woof.

So, anyway, what can we learn from Mystique #24? Hmm. Well, we can learn that…

– The comic is to do with an ass-kicking, smoking-hot female double agent and, coincidentally, on the cover Mystique has the word ‘alias’ literally coming out of her ass. That’s just nasty, Mayhew.

– Wolverine is on the picture on the “previously…” recap page for #23!! Buy this book!!

– Fantomex ain’t dead, he was just goofing around. Such a goofer.

– The Quiet Man is really Steinbeck… but REALLY really Steinbeck with Prudence’s mind trapped inside him. Bet you he can’t even look at a lingerie catalogue without being more conflicted than Macaulay Culkin after a weekend soujourn to Michael Jackson’s house.

– Oh, yes.

– DAVE is just generally super swank.

– That chick on the Champions: Return to Arms advert is superiorly swankier.

– Shepard is totally Prudence’s incestuous brother. That’s all kinds of twisted. Like when my arm fell out of it’s socket. HAHAHAHAHAHA FUN.

– Why do they have to put superfluous bits of cardboard into the middle of comics??? Not even bits that you can take out, it’s jammed in there tighter than that sh**-stain on the side of my toilet bowl!!

– 12 CDs for the price of 1 = gobshite. Unless you really want Good Charlotte.

– Forge so totally wants to bop Mystique. So do I. BOOBIES!

– I WANT SEASON 2!!!!!!!

Ah well, guess I’ll just have to make do with getting the Alias season 2 boxset and hope that Quesada can get J.J. Abrams to commit to writing a comic book…

And with that, I’m gonna pass out. Worst review ever or avant garde masterpiece? U-Decide!!

And now, to make things worth posting… JAMIE MOTHERF***ING HATTON!!!!

———-
Hooo.. everybody say goodbye to Burnside – God knows this might be the last time you see him. That rant was near Baker-ish in it’s severity. Well, I guess I’m here to review what’s left of Mystique. You know, the parts that Iain didn’t mention. Well, I’ll break it down simply that this issue just didn’t have the same parting glass feeling I wanted it to. I guess it really never could have lived up to what it was built to.

When you take something that has at moments, incredible, it’s going to have a hard time to close off perfect – especially when it’s dying before it’s time. By the end of the book, very little has changed. So, Buckley or Quesada or whomever can now say ‘Kay, Mystique’s back at status quo – GO!’ She can be used again without worrying about touching any inch of this book. Sad, no?

All is resolved, and at the end – we get the Kaiser Soze ending.. Mystique walks away just as she started. Alone and morally ambiguous. Oh, and Fantomax isn’t dead either. Meh.

Artwise, it holds strong – period. Nothing so explosive as has not been seen in the book before, and I’m sure the fact that Garcia knew he was doing the last issue – he didn’t feel the need to go all crazy. So he just did his job, which is all we can ask of him.

The Hatton Overall

With two amazing books being cancelled over the last month (Alpha Flight being the other) – it’s not a good day to NOT have an ‘X’ in your title over at the House of Ideas. Let’s gather together to see what other book they toss McKeever on only to ditch him a few issues later. Bless Mary Jane for getting a second shot at life.