[Kinda Book Review] Essential Xmen 7

Continuing the run of my youth... with this new chapter.

Here we start after the Mutant Massacre and it's fallout. The XMen are on the run, with many wounded mutants and team members. It's a good follow up and has some decent emotional moments.

Here the team adds Psyloche before she becomes Asian with the psychic knife. She's a blind woman with cyber eyes given to her by MOJO. That is a crazy look ahead to reality TV and 24h cycle of TV. I remember reading that in the 80s and thinking how crazy and farfetched it seemed in 87 or 88...

And now...

This book concludes with the Fall of the Mutants, which kills the xmen and returns Storm's power to her (finally). But it left an ashen taste in my mouth... I remember reading then and thinking it was cool... having missed a lot of the buildup. But while binge reading it... it feels like a quick and forced cross title. Unlike the massacre, the titles had nothing to do with each other. It was... another story...

Still no one gives a crap about Rachel...

I wondered about giving this a rating... it include the very good Fantastic Four vs Xmen where they save Shadowcat from becoming a ghost and vanish. A very good story all around...

With the highs and lows together, I will give it a 3/5.

[Kinda Book Review] La Reine Etranglee by Maurice Druon

One of the best-known series of historical fiction books in French is "Les Rois Maudits" (the Cursed Kings) which deals with King Philippe IV Le Bel (The Fair) and his children. His three sons all ascended to the throne and were the last kings of the Capetian Dynasty. Starting with Philippe VI, power shifted to the House of Valois. King Philippe Le Bel is best known for bringing an end to the Knights Templars and the trials that end with the death of the last Grandmaster. He was a massive reformer and someone with strong ideas and the personal power and charisma to get it done.

A few years back, I read the first one of the series, which started with the execution of the lords of the Templars.

I kept this one for later... Finally I sat down and read it.

The first book of the series was pretty good (oddly enough, it seems I did not put a review on this blog...). But this one... It was... Fine. Not great. As the book title indicates, deals book deals with the strangling of a queen - here Marguerite de Bourgogne (Margaret in English). Interestingly, after Philippe le Bel's death, his son Louis X (dit le Hutin or the Quarrelsome).

The book opens with the death of Philippe le Bel and the ascension of Louis X. Louis' wife Marguerite is kept in Chateau-Gaillard up the Seine River because she was found guilty of adultery (in Book 1). The plot deals with Valois and d'Artois arranging for Louis to find a second wife (Clemence de Hongrie).

My biggest issue with this is that the characters are very one-dimensional. D'Artois is manipulative, Valois is impotent, Louis is unsure of himself and quarrelsome, the Italians are affable, Blanche is candid and vapid, Marigny is honorable, and Marguerite is a defeated woman. There is little to make these people (Louis and Marguerite are the only ones with a little depth). So it's very black vs white.

This era is France's equivalent of the War of the Roses and generally fascinating. Each characters could be seen one way or another. This is not what you will find here.

I will settle on a 2/5 for this one. I enjoyed it more than most other I rated 2, but the almost cartoonish villains cheapens the interest. If I were to use this for D&D, I may bump it up to 3. But nah... it's a solid 2.

[Kinda Book Review] X-men Essential Vol 6

Still going through the first ~250 issues of the X-men and now with volume 5.

Okay... The X-men and New Mutants return to Asgard where everyone gets some cool development again. Now we have a Secret Wars II crossover with Rachel receiving the Phoenix from the Beyonder, the introduction of Mojo, Lady Deathstrike, Freedom force, and the Mutant Massacre.

Now... If you never read those comics (they cover X-men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Power Pack, and Thor), this is at once, a delight to read and an absolute horror.

The delight coming from the delicate and complicated ballet where some groups come in and out of the Morlock tunnels, in small groups, a few at a time, then exit. Others (Thor) do things that affect everyone in the tunnels.

Horror because of the subject matter. A lot of people die. Not only "unnamed morlocks" but some that are known too. Even heroes do not escape unharmed: Shadowcat becomes insubstancial, Nightcrawler in a coma, Colossus is paralysed, and Angel gets pinned to a wall.

Vicious. Brutal.

I mean being able to read the whole thing in one place was well worth the price of the cover. I could not let this down. Okay, I did because I had to sleep and go to work...

The one storyline that, again pissed me off, was Rachel. At some point, she disappears and the X-Men don't seem to care what happens to her. She leaves and they move on. Okay, the Massacre begins, but having a "Where'd Rachel go" would've been nice.

This one get a 5/5. This is a masterclass in Comic Book storytelling, across ~10 issues. When you're done, you are scarred as a reader. It's so sad...