X-Men Forever #4 Review: A Tale of Two Storms…

Hey, everyone, jrpbsp here… Here is my one review for this week ‘X-Men: Forever’. Hope you enjoy it.

X-Men Forever #4 cover X-Men: Forever #4 (preview)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Tom Grummett

Note: This issue does not contain Wolverine.

SPOILERS BELOW…

RECAP: The issue opens with the hidden group assessing the situation and deciding to cut their losses with Storm.

We then cut to Storm reacting to Kitty having cut her face. Kitty has one of Wolverine’s claws that is apparently a part of her. She and Storm fight briefly before Storm throws up some concealment and flees toward the Morlock tunnels.

The rest of the X-Men are trapped in the Danger Room with a power inhibitor. Xavier appears to tell them her can not track Storm. Kitty uses her new claw and frees the team from the outside.

Fury, Beast and Xavier discuss the problems with Storm and Kitty’s new power. They theorize that Kitty got the claw when she phased with Logan during the fight with Cortez.

Sabretooth offers to go with the team to get revenge against Storm. Scott agrees but only if Creed plays by their rules. He accepts and Scott splits them up. He, Creed, Kitty and Jean will pursue Ororo through the tunnels while Rogue, Kurt and Gambit take to the skies to head her off.

Hank takes some blood from Kitty’s claw to analyze the DNA. He then manages hot wire the power grid enough to use the orbital scanner to find Storm. They find two separate hits, and send Rogue’s group after the second target.

Scott’s team makes contact quickly and are hit with a surprise attack. The team recovers and Storm is forced to hit them with a whirlwind to buy herself time to run again. She makes it to the surface to find Consortium agents waiting for her. They are not there to help but rather to kill her.

Rogue’s team, meanwhile, lands on the Brooklyn Bridge and finds the source of the second signal. It is Storm still in her child phase. She hugs Gambit as we see an infrared scope draw a bead on them.

MY TAKE: While this issue is still good I feel like it has slipped a bit in quality this time around. Perhaps because they are coming out so quickly, I felt several things were not well explained and some of the characterizations felt off. Nothing was bad enough to really hurt the still strong story but it did impede the flow a bit.

I am seriously wondering why they bothered to set this in any part of the canon 616 world though. Claremont obviously has things he wants to do and it would have been a lot easier if he could have simply started with the team and abilities he wanted rather then having to make up excuses.

The biggest one of these is the sudden status changes we are getting. Cortez’s power is starting to look a lot like magic. He is only supposed to be a power and life amplifier but now he can transfer abilities and fix people’s heads too? Not to mention adamantium suddenly bonding to a normal skeleton. Add to that Logan and Jean being in love and Creed being willing to work with the X-Men and it feels like a What If?

Now that is not really a bad thing. As long as the story is good and the characters are strong, and these are, I love the What If? stories. In fact I am very much drawn into the world and plot that Claremont is crafting. He has some great ideas and the execution is good, he is just having to spend far too much time explaining away the status quo and it detracts from the story.

My only real problem with the actual story, outside of the changes, is Claremont’s love and overuse of Kitty. She is a personal favorite of mine, but he tends to make her the end all be all on the team. Her powers work when the others do not. She is given an unbreakable claw so she can fight and so on. I would rather he spread out the action more and give the others things to do.

In the end the story and plot remain strong but he is trying to make too many changes too quickly, in my opinion, and the cracks are starting to show. However, once we get through this initial story arc, I expect everything will settle down and we will be back to just telling stories. And that is the series’ strongest part.

Thanks for reading my review for Wolverine Files. I will be keeping to this format for the most part but please keep the comments coming and I will see everyone again next time.

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Ace
14 years ago

When it comes to this issue, there are three things that matter (In no particular order): 1) Sabretooth being shoehorned on to the team, which we all saw coming. 2) The big reveal at the end of the issue. Which I admit, is somewhat intriguing, though the possibility for failure is massive. 3) Kitty’s new found claw. This is the biggy. For me, there’s two things to keep in mind… An adamantium claw bonding to a regular skeleton is a bizarre twist when you think in 616 logic. But this isn’t 616, this is “What if Claremont got to write… Read more »

jrpbsp
14 years ago

Well I don’t want to make a huge response due to the limited space. If you want we can make a topic for this. But I will say that yes this is meant to be outside of the current canon but they picked a specific canon place to jump from. Which means everything has to be seriously shoehorned to work. They could have done the whole set up in a couple of pages if they just make the whole series in another ‘verse they could have set everything up in a couple of pages. Sabretooth is less vicious, Cortez is… Read more »

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