‘Uncanny X-Men: First Class’ #3 Review: Irish Ghosts

Hey, everyone, jrpbsp here… For my final review of the week I am doing ‘Uncanny X-Men: First Class’.  Hope you enjoy it.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #3 cover Uncanny X-Men: First Class #3 (preview)
Writer: Scott Gray
Art: Roger Cruz

SPOILERS BELOW…

RECAP: The issue opens with the X-Men doing a training exercise with everyone against Banshee. They are trying to prevent the Irish mutant from capturing the flag but despite their best efforts they fail to stop him. Cyclops is very impressed with Sean’s performance.

We cut to Sean and Moira out on a date. Sean is ready to commit to her but Moira thinks things are moving too fast. They leave and she refuses to be flown back to the mansion. On the way out of the restaurant, Banshee’s pocket is picked.

When he gets back to Xavier’s, his ex-father-in-law Patrick is there ranting about his daughter. Sean relates to Moira the story of meeting his wife Maeve and their relationship up to her death in a bombing while Banshee was away deep under cover.

After the story, Sean finally notices his wallet is gone and we see the pick-pocket conducting a voodoo ritual to raise his deceased wife. That night Sean sees Maeve who tells him to go to Belfast. He awakens Patrick and he relays that he had seen the same thing.

The next day Sean, Patrick and Moira head to Belfast, Maine where Sean originally proposed to Maeve.  We then see a brief interlude with Peter Corbeau and his scientists studying the strange people that are standing on the sun.

Upon arriving in Belfast, Sean leaves the others to go and fly around looking for Maeve. Not long after he leaves, Patrick drugs Moira. Banshee does find his departed wife but she turns into a monster and attacks him claiming he owes her a blood debt. Refusing to fight back, she tears him up and he falls into the sea.

Meanwhile Patrick explains to a captive Moira that he planned the whole thing and hired Julius Dupree, the Voodoo man, when he found out he was dying. He blames Sean for Moira’s death and did not want to see him happy with another woman. Moira figures out that Julius is actually a mutant and is psionically creating Maeve.

Maeve delivers Sean soon after and Patrick reveals that the whole place is wired to explode. Sean fights back but it is Maeve who saves him in the end, freeing him from his bonds. Dupree escapes as do Sean and Moira but Maeve keeps Patrick in the building as it explodes. In the end Sean makes his peace with his wife and Moira lets him fly her.

MY TAKE: While Banshee is not one of my favorite characters, you can not help but like him in this issue. It is definitely the strongest of the series so far and is filled with a decent amount of plot and a lot of very good character moments. In fact the entire thing is an exploration of love both past and present and it shows how love might die it never truly stays buried.

Thankfully, the character moments are well done since there is little else in the issue. But you can definitely feel for Sean and even Moira here. Starting a new relationship is always difficult and it is worse when you have to deal with the ghosts of an old love, in this case quite literally. Although Patrick is little more then a two-dimensional villain, I am glad they at least made an attempt to provide him a believable motivation for his actions.

There were definite flaws with the issue though. The training sequence was unneeded, it just allowed the rest of the X-Men to have a cameo and show Banshee is an experienced fighter. But since there was no real combat in the issue it was just wasted pages that could have gone to the main story. I also disagreed with how easily Banshee humiliated the rest of the team. Many of them are just as experienced as he is and yet they are all made to look foolish.

I also do not see the purpose of inventing yet another mutant for the story. It seems obvious that we are meant to see the character of Julius again but he was an uninteresting stereotype to me and I would have preferred to see established X-villains being used for the stories.

In the end though, this was a strong, character based story that really explored the relationships of Banshee and gave you a look inside his mind and heart. It made for a nice little one off and it was  good to see the First Class format being put to use. I just hope we get the spotlight aimed at some of the other characters soon, like Wolverine, Jean or Storm.

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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