X-Men: Black has been a strange little set of one-shots.  The Magneto, Mojo and Mystique stories were mainly just restatements of the characters.  But Juggernaut seemed to be setting up a new status quo for the character (if not an especially interesting one).

And now we have Emma Frost‘s one-shot, written by Leah Williams and pencilled by Chris Bachalo (with six inkers, so the deadlines must have been pressing on this one).  This one is actually important to the plot.

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The X-Men Black one-shots have been surprisingly decent considering that they’re effectively fill in stories.  But perhaps we were bound to hit something generic in the end, and here we are.

What is there to say about this one, really?  The Juggernaut finds himself in the Silver Age X-Men mansion and gets into a fight with the X-Men inside, immediately suspecting that something is not right here.  As it turns out, he’s right, but not in an especially interesting way.

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Mariko Tamaki and Juann Cabal get a fresh issue #1 for the start of their run, but this is very much a continuation of Tom Taylor’s All-New Wolverine.  The set-up is exactly the same, except for the dropping of the “Wolverine” name in favour of “X-23” – which nobody draws attention to until issue #5, and which Laura pointedly refuses to explain.  So perhaps it’s something we’re coming back to, and they just didn’t want it to overshadow the first arc.  Or perhaps it’s something we’re kicking into the long grass, because we all know the real reason – Wolverine Classic is back – so there’s not much point trying to sell us on an organic story reason.

Visually, the style of the book hasn’t drastically changed either.  Cabal drew much of the “Orphans of X” storyline for All-New Wolverine, and he maintains that style here.  Unfortunately, deadlines seem to catch up with him by the final issue, most of which is handled competently enough by Marcio Fiorito.  But the rest of the book has some great visual flourishes, not just with the usual contrast between Laura and her enthusiastic mini-me Gabby, but also in the way the Stepford Cuckoos’ unity and pose starts to break down when they’re alone and arguing amongst themselves.

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This is an interesting new phenomenon – a book that didn’t survive as a monthly makes a comeback on the strength of sales of the collected edition.  Perhaps it should be more surprising that this hasn’t happened before.  It’s not that unusual for Marvel and DC to launch a book in the expectation that the potential audience lies outside the direct market, but those books tend to be ones whose appeal is obviously outside the direct market.  Sina Grace’s Iceman, being basically a mainstream X-book, despite the heavy focus on Iceman’s coming out, is not so clearly in that category.  But here it is for another run, presumably due to sales of the collection coming as a pleasant surprise to Marvel.

The first two issues seem to be self-contained, so let’s take them together.

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Shape changing is one of those relatively low key powers that often gets taken for granted by writers.  We know what Mystique can do, it’s a handy plot device sometimes, on with the show.

This is Seanan McGuire’s second story for Marvel – the first was the X-Men Gold Annual with the holiday camp – and since any wider plotlines are at best marginal, it’s free to spend its time re-stating the premise, and reminding us of why Mystique runs rings around everyone.  So whether it’s in the real world or a superhero setting, Mystique is happily bouncing around unnoticed as a background character.

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