10 Thoughts on X-Men #4 by Victor Gischler and Paco Medina (Review)

10 Thoughts, Reviews, Top Story

X-Men #4

Written by Victor Gischler

Art by Paco Medina

1. Gischler and Medina have the mutants putting a band-aid on a sword wound while they get their acts together with thousands of vampires attacking on the streets of San Fransisco.

2. This strongly echoes the Utopia X crossover with Dark Avengers in the X-Men beginning on the defensive, then getting more deadly with their backs to the wall.

3. Gischler is keeping the Morrison/Fraction characterization of Cyclops with which he’s among my favorite  characters- this is a guy with a plan who is deadly when backed into a corner.

4.  Other characters are complaining of nothing coming of Dracula’s resurrection, but Cyclops assures us, the game isn’t up yet.

5. Wolverine, a vampire here and not elsewhere, is pretty clearly part of the plan.

6. X-Men killing vampires in teams of two is a good start to get a feel  for the threat without giving too much away to their enemies.  Only issue really is why Angel and not Archangel?  The latter certainly seems like he’d be more effective against vampires.

7. Cyclops speech to the vampire leader is awesome, as is Logan showing up to try and get him to join.  Again, Xarus commanding someone (here Wolvy) to get Cyclops head echoes the Dark X-Men crossover, as well as the planned assault on Utopia.

8. The art is mostly good, although a few of the action scenes are a bit rough, I’ll happily trade that for the good facial expressions throughout.

9. <b>Grey Scherl Guest Thought</b>: I am ridiculously underwhelmed by Vampire Wolverine and don’t see him posing even the most minor of threats, in fact, I would not be surprised if he winds up being the one to stake Xarus just to pull a “Haha, I was under cover!”, and then his healing factor makes him normal again.

10. <b>Rating: 6/10</b> – This is a good issue with Cyclops especially well-handled, although no one else gets much to do and this is a calm before the storm issue.  Let’s get this plot in motion now- it was set up in issue one and we’ll be on to issue five without anything but Wolverine turning and Dracula’s resurrection occurring, and really, the latter was accomplished in other books.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.