Continuing from last issue, Destiny made physical contact with Switchback and saw all of Avalon in flames. Meanwhile, Nightcrawler is suffocating along with the other refugees within a submarine whose systems are quickly failing. They are forced to rise above the surface so they can breathe.
Once there, they run into what I assume is a pirate ship whose captain is Callisto, better known as the leader of the Morlocks in the main reality. She offers the humans and mutants refuge aboard her ship.
Damask, Dead Man Wade, and Moonstar are following them, going by Apocalypse's orders to trail Nightcrawler to find the route to Avalon. Apocalypse contacts Damask and orders a change of plan on a whim - he's going to send her reinforcements so they can go ahead and destroy Avalon now. It certainly suggests that Destiny's vision is correct. But the best part of this scene is how gleefully evil these bad guys are. Moonstar keeps going to Dead Man Wade with a razor in order to watch his healing factor at work. Damask gets sick of her foolishness and kills her. You might think Wade would be relieved, but he's actually quite sad that he can no longer "play" with Moonstar.
Callisto loads the refugees on to her ship, taking all their valuables first "as a cover" for being a salvage ship in case they are boarded. Really, that should have been the first clue, but these people are so desperate they followed the orders without question, and no big surprise, Callisto actually just sends them all to drown. Nightcrawler, who had been hanging out on the top of the submarine just not paying attention to any of this, figures it out when it's convenient to the plot and then gets pissed. He slaughters most of Callisto's crew and is about to duel with her when Mystique drops out of a helicopter and orders Callisto to leave her son alone.
I don't think it's any big shocker that the Deadpool moment is the best part of the whole issue. The problem with the rest of the issue is that Nightcrawler is just as guilty for killing those people as Callisto is. They suggest he needed time to recover from the near suffocation in the submarine, but if all the humans who were going through the same situation had enough time to recover to walk from one ship to the other and give up all their valuables, he really should have known what was going on. Also, while we get plenty of corpses lying around with dead eyes, all the killing in this issue happens off camera. That may be a censorship issue though, so I'll try not to judge it too harshly.
Though this is pretty ghastly, so maybe not.
Gah, I couldn't really stand this issue. The art is hideous, the story is trying way too hard to be badass and grim with (as you said) little actually ability to actually back it up in the art. In fact, there were bits where I was left so confused by what just happened in the art, I kept having to backtrack.
ReplyDeleteReally not enjoying this one.