Solntsevskaya Bratva<\/a>, which is basically the Russian mob, and that his boss Viktor Komolov has brought Omega Red back to life, which is a very bad thing. \u00a0The X-Men go to find out more, and Colossus gets to tell us that on reflection he does remember his father mentioning a brother once. \u00a0Peter and Illyana meet up with Anatoly, who explains that Komolov is into black magic, but he isn’t especially good at it, so Omega Red’s resurrection hasn’t entirely worked. \u00a0He’s using his vampire powers to keep himself alive, but that’s eventually going to fail him too.<\/p>\nAnatoly is actually trying to lure in Magik so that the mobsters can capture her and get her to complete the job of bringing Omega Red back to life. \u00a0There’s a nice enough trick of doing the same scene between the X-Men and Anatoly twice, once with them apparently falling for his “trust me” line, and the other time with their telepathic conversation going on over the top. \u00a0All this builds to Colossus – who lost his powers for a couple of issues due to nanites – finding the willpower to turn to steel again so that he can rescue Magik and punch out the baddie, while Logan beats Omega Red, which is presented as if there was some sort of parallel involved between the scenes. \u00a0Everyone goes home.<\/p>\n
So. \u00a0That was two issues.<\/p>\n
What we have here is a mixture of two potentially decent ideas being rushed, and some other stuff that seems to have been nailed on for the sake of familiarity but just causes clutter.<\/p>\n
The emotional heart of this story is meant to be the idea of Peter being caught between his common sense scepticism, and his wish to be reconciled with a surviving member of his family. \u00a0You could do something with that, but not when the plot is basically “Peter sees through him immediately and is a bit sad about that”. \u00a0We’ve got no real reason to be invested in Anatoly, and the story never sells us on the idea that we should want him to stick around. \u00a0It’s an idea that needs more. \u00a0Maybe Anatoly needs to be torn as well, and you play up the tragedy that he’s ultimately too weak to break from his boss, preventing the reconciliation. \u00a0Maybe he’s an impostor and you use him to set up the idea that the real Anatoly is out there somewhere. \u00a0I don’t know. \u00a0But something more than this.<\/p>\n
The central gimmick of the story, on the other hand, is the Russian mob, but with magic. \u00a0That feels like it should be a fun genre-blending thing, but it’s just not, because it boils down in practice to mobsters who fire energy bolts. \u00a0It wants to be wackier. \u00a0It wants to cut loose a bit, and it just doesn’t. \u00a0Lan Medina’s art doesn’t help much either; it’s competent but unexciting, and everything feels rather ordinary.<\/p>\n
Then we’ve got the problem that these are two concepts that have nothing much to do with one another beyond plot mechanics. \u00a0If you want to do “long lost Rasputin” and “magic Russian mobsters”, surely that’s an Illyana story, not a Peter one. \u00a0Or at least it ought to give equal billing to both siblings. \u00a0Illyana’s here, but largely to serve the plot; it’s emphatically Peter’s story.<\/p>\n
And what’s more, neither of these ideas has anything much to do with Omega Red. \u00a0The story doesn’t need him and doesn’t want him. \u00a0He feels like he’s been nailed on to provide a familiar name, when the better idea would have been to go to town on the magic mobsters. \u00a0What exactly is Komolov planning to do with Omega Red, anyway? \u00a0The story wants us to accept that he’s a terrifying threat who could bring down the country – Anatoly tells us that “Komolov believes Rossovich will be beholden to him, that with Omega Red’s strength, he can seize control over all of Russia”. \u00a0But how?<\/p>\n
Logan gets a speech in part one which tries to sell us on this but only ends up lampshading the problem. \u00a0“Rossovich was a serial killer who the government tried to execute for his crimes. \u00a0Some Soviets had other ideas so they put him in their super-soldier program. \u00a0He’s got a healing factor and a mutant power that lets him vampire out people’s life forces… \u00a0Bottom line… Omega Red is a one-man global terrorist \/ crime organization. \u00a0With everything facing Russia these days, Rossovich’s return just might push ’em over the brink.”<\/p>\n
What?<\/p>\n
Seriously, what?<\/p>\n
He’s got a healing factor and he’s an energy vampire. \u00a0His main motivations are random murder and hunting for macguffins to keep himself alive. \u00a0He got killed by Wolverine once before and he gets beaten by Logan again in this story. \u00a0He’s a mid-range X-Men villain at a generous push. \u00a0In no way is he a “one-man global terrorist \/ crime organisation”. \u00a0He’s not even especially interested in politics or power, he’s just a glorified spree killer. \u00a0And this guy is going to put Russia “over the brink”? \u00a0Come off it. \u00a0This is handwaving to disguise the fact that the plot has no concrete idea of what Omega Red is actually going to do, and fair enough, because it doesn’t really matter – but it’s pitched the Generic Threat at an absurdly wrong level for the character.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“En’Kane” has a couple of decent ideas which it doesn’t develop very well, and largely fails to knit them into a satisfying story. \u00a0It’s a bit of a dud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My initial optimism for this relaunch is starting to fade. \u00a0It’s not the direction. \u00a0That still feels like a sensible back-to-basics retrenching with enough changes to avoid outright retread. \u00a0It’s the stories that are being told within that framework, which feel lacklustre. \u00a0The “En’Kane” two-parter is a case in point. It goes like this. \u00a0Colossus […]<\/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-3893","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\/3893","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=3893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3894,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3893\/revisions\/3894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}