Comic Review: Wolverine & The X-Men #2
Issue: Wolverine & The X-Men #2
Name: Welcome to the X-Men! Now Die! Part 2
Published: Novermer 2011
Blurb: 
Creators:
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Chris Bachalo
Inkers: Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza
Letterer: Rob Steen
Characters:
The Good: Wolverine, Iceman, Rachel Grey, Lockeed, Kitty Pryde, Beast, Kid Gladiator, Warbird, Husk, Idie, Broo, Kid Omega,
The Bad: Baron, Kade Kilgore, Manuel, Frankenstein monsters, Krakoa – The Living Island
The Undecided: Abigail Marigold, Eugene Clud, Interdimensional Gremlins (Bamfs)
My Thoughts:
Issue 2 of Wolverine and the X-Men carries from the first and while it’s not quite as good as #1, the art continues to shine and I love learning more about the characters, new and old alike.
In this issue, we continue the story from #1 with the inspectors from the New York Department of Education leaving the school but being interrupted by some kind of earthquake. It turns out this eruption is actually a mutant named Krakoa who’s working for the Hellfire Club but we don’t find that out till the end of the issue. In the meantime, we meet more of the villains of the tale.
The Hellfire Club seems to be comprised of 4 kids – Kade Kilgore who we met in the last issue and who appears to be a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, Baron, Manuel, and a girl I didn’t catch the name of round out the group. From the dialog, they appear to be rich kids looking to cause trouble with their wealth and it’s yet to be seen if they are mutants or just rich sociopaths. As mentioned in the previous post, Kade is determined to destroy Wolverine’s new school and in addition to turning the inspectors into a Sauron and a Wendigo, he unleashes an army of flamethrower wielding Frankenstein monsters in an attempt to attain that goal.
The X-Men are not to be taken lightly though as they battle the monsters and Iceman steps into a front line role displaying a new power to control multiple ice golems and it works out pretty well. They defeat the Frankenstein monsters but even with the students’ help, they’re gonna have trouble dealing with Krakoa, The Living Island, who’s really messing up the school buildings.
From the look of things one of the students, Quentin Quire might hold the answer as to how to fend off the giant rock beast, but we’ll have to wait till next issue to find out how that goes.
This issue has all kinds of stuff going on but still manages to build up the characters. As we learn about the Hellfire Club through their actions we also find out that Iceman has a crush on Kitty Pryde when he plants a kiss on her in the middle of the battle. We also learn that Idie actually gives Broo his name as he’s so infatuated with her at first sight that he doesn’t even tell her what his name was before he met her. It’s also apparent that this is one of the first times Iceman’s stepped up and it’s clear he wants to realize his potential rather than be called a joke – by who, I’m not sure.
On the whole, I enjoyed this issue. It wasn’t as fun as the last but it certainly contains a lot of cool action scenes that are well drawn and some nice character building.
My Rating: B+
This comic can be found on Marvel Unlimited and Comixology and is currently on Comixology Unlimited so you can borrow it from there.