X-Men by Jed Mackay vol. 2: Hostile Takeover

As if butting heads with the “Uncanny” team during “Raid on Graymalkin” with little to show for it wasn’t bad enough, Cyclops and his team of X-Men now find themselves dealing with an interstellar threat.  Which is heralded by his spacefaring father, Corsair, and it may not have anything to do with him (directly) this time.  Then they find themselves dealing with a Professor X who has actually decided to escape from Graymalkin Prison before the real menace shows up on their doorstep.  The shadowy organization known as 3K finally makes their move as Cassandra Nova activates a secret mutant to terrorize the team’s base and home city.  That’s not the only threat the X-Men face here as they also find themselves up against… the X-Men?

MacKay tries out longer-form storytelling here with a two-issue arc and a five-issue arc in this volume, with the “X-Manhunt” tie-in sandwiched between them.  The results aren’t bad, but I find myself appreciating the single-issue stories with interconnecting threads approach from the first volume.  Still, the opening two-parter involving Corsair and a bunch of angry aliens is definitely fun, with some effective misdirection and some appreciative nods to inter-title continuity.  The “X-Manhunt” issue is also surprisingly effective given the bad word-of-mouth I’d heard about the crossover as it spotlights a lot of winning teamwork while also giving Quentin Quire a memorable showdown against Professor X.

That leaves us with the five-issue arc that wraps up the volume, and a story of that length suggests that MacKay intended for it to kick things up a notch here.  It’s ambitious for what the series has been doing so far, but it doesn’t quite pull that off because, outside of Nova, 3K doesn’t really strike me as being a particularly exciting group of villains.  The writer does a better job of getting me invested in the bio-matter manipulator who the wizened telepath is manipulating, while also delivering some interesting moments like Cyclops’ plan to defeat the opposing team, and the organization’s offer to Beast.  All of this is effectively illustrated by Netho Diaz and Ryan Stegman (with Emilio Laiso credibly handling his issue), even as the stories inside still have me wanting to see where everything goes next, and also not feeling the need to tell anyone who isn’t already reading that they need to start.