“Multiple Issues: Part 2”
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Pablo Raimondi
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Plot: Madrox has been captured by a freakier than usual Hydra. Meanwhile, Monet and Theresa try to heal their rift with a Parisian shopping spree. It’s a toss-up which teammate is in bigger trouble.
Comments: I see what David was doing with the Doc Samson therapy issue now. The book has been refocused, galvanized after coping with fall-out from “Decimation” and Civil War. Here we’ve got Jamie back to figuring out the infinite facets of his fluid personality, and Monet and Siryn figuring out their personal stances on anti-mutant paranoia.
This team (even if we only see half of it this issue) is the raw edge of the mutant front, and not because they’re covered in spikes and have a bondage fetish. Instead, David has the skills to capture the personal, subjective stakes of prejudice, fear and paranoia. Where he doesn’t go so far as to depict mutant (or any super-) powers as a curse, he doesn’t see them as a cure-all, either. Jamie Madrox would be a messed-up dude were he only one person; since he can be legion, all that means is that his problems are multiplied. Monet and Siryn too have their own ways of coping with their abilities, and those ways are just magnified versions of how they cope with themselves, and each other.
This psychological verité that David achieves makes his characters infinitely relatable, as a band of misfits (powered and non-powered alike) that have banded together just to avoid being alone. I’m not sure that a better argument could be made against prejudice, the core metaphor the mutant books have always faced.
This book has felt the fallout of “Decimation” perhaps more than any other title. This issue, under duress, Jamie, Monet and Siryn all find themselves capable of far more than they expected under pressure. Some of their responses are more graceful than others, and some are more fatal. There’s a violent, melodramatic edge to this issue’s events that is not so much over-the-top as exaggerated for effect. These are vicarious pulpy yarns we’re thrilling to, after all.
Raimondi, inking himself this month, brings out a Mike McKone quality in his own pencils, which is never a bad thing. His wicked sense of humor continues to jibe with David’s deadpan worldview: witness the teenage-appearing Hydra agent, commanding her army via text messages, or the creepy Boris Karloff-esque mad doctor delighting in his torture techniques (which of course spin out of control before the issue’s end).
This book has found its stride, and its ideal creative team. Now if it can just find its way through the mine-field of the next Marvel mega-event.
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