A single issue story nestling between longer arcs, in which Brian Bendis turns his attention back to one of the rogue team’s students, Benjamin Deeds. \u00a0He’s the one who, thus far, has merely demonstrated the ability to change shape to look like whoever’s standing right next to him. \u00a0This is obviously not very useful.<\/p>\n
The main thrust of this issue is to establish that what we’ve seen from him thus far is just the most visible aspect of a rather more useful power that he simply hasn’t got under control yet. \u00a0Basically, Benjamin’s power is to make whoever he’s talking to feel good about themselves and want to help him. \u00a0He shouldn’t be turning completely into a copy of them, so much as somebody they’ll vaguely recognise and feel positive towards. \u00a0This is at least a useful power.<\/p>\n
But it’s also singularly unhelpful in combat, and it’s only really useful if you’re prepared to be manipulative, which is something Benjamin doesn’t feel that sure about either. \u00a0Naturally, Emma Frost has no such inhibitions and is delighted to take him under her wing as a protege who can learn not just from her experience, but from her questionable ethical standards. \u00a0There’s some suggestion that this is all part of Emma building her own power base within the rebel group.<\/p>\n
The idea is sound, and I think this is also one of the first issues where the difference between the two schools really comes across as something more fundamental than the level of comfort in their dormitories. \u00a0For all that Scott calls his operation a school, it’s not; he thinks he’s recruiting soldiers, and dammit, he’s going to shoehorn all of the mutants he recruits into that mould, regardless of whether their powers and personalities are remotely suited to it. \u00a0His world view has no place for non-combatants; you can quit if you must, but if you stay you’re going to be turned into a fighter. \u00a0He’s not a headmaster, he’s a drill sergeant, and this team is fundamentally a bit dodgy. \u00a0Benjamin would very obviously be better off with the regular X-Men, but has no way of getting there.<\/p>\n
Chris Bachalo’s art here is patchy. \u00a0He’s excellent when it comes to the character moments, and he really sells the idea of Benjamin becoming\u00a0similar<\/em> to the people he meets. \u00a0Since the centrepiece of this issue is an explanation of a rather complicated power, it was vital to get the visual right, and Bachalo does just that. \u00a0But there are some highly dubious design choices. \u00a0Emma is wearing wildly out of character clothes (since when is she Avril Lavigne?), and the interior of Scott’s school (which is meant<\/em> to look like a hastily converted military prison, and needs to have a contrast with the main school for thematic reasons) looks like a four star hotel.<\/p>\n A good issue on the whole – it’s nice that the various students aren’t being allowed to simply fade into the background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A single issue story nestling between longer arcs, in which Brian Bendis turns his attention back to one of the rogue team’s students, Benjamin Deeds. \u00a0He’s the one who, thus far, has merely demonstrated the ability to change shape to look like whoever’s standing right next to him. \u00a0This is obviously not very useful. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}