Summary
- Smith asks Twilight why they're throwing in their lot with the Takers, questioning a species whose first thought upon awakening from suspended animation is to exact revenge. On Mars, December continues to work on trying to open a communications link to Smith and Twilight and, at one point, is driven to tears by her loneliness. Dr. Isaacs opens her son's suspended-animation pod, only to have him disintegrate after a few moments (confirming her fear that the original sample was decomposing like her older clones). Smith uses his powers to protect the spaceship from the planetoid's defense systems and Twilight uses hers to open a portal into the planetoid so that the Takers can attack.
- Miguel and Xina create a tank that they plan on using on a suicide mission to take out Nostromo. Meanwhile, Doom watches from a cliff as the techno-organic virus takes over Latveria. Miguel and Xina break into Castle Doom, with Xina distracting the Phalanx with the tank while Spidey heads from Nostro. Nostro tells him that he knows what he's doing and begs him to kill him. However, Doom arrives, announcing that "the borders of Latveria have been restored to their former glory," the apparent goal of Doom's deal with the Phalanx. Doom offers the Phalanx the possibility of retreat and Magus seems to accept it, saying that Doom's tenacity and "O'Hara's desperate gambit" have given him pause. Miguel expresses horror that he was willing to kill Nostro, who warns him that it's a trick. On cue, Magus and the Phalanx then attack, noting that O'Hara would've succeeded had he killed Nostro. Magus then strips Doom of his armor, thinking that he's won. Doom tells him that he's overestimated his position and utters a codeword, "Cynthia." It activates a Trojan-Horse program that frees Nostro and terminates the Phalanx's communications with the Dreadnodes. Doom exposits that he knew that the Phalanx had left behind the Scout program when the mutants defeated it in the late 1990s, so he kept track of the program and embedded his own programming into it. He lost of track of the program upon his return, so he spread the rumor of the "mutant messiah myth" to "ferret him out;" he then introduced the Trojan Horse into Nostro. Moreover, Winn is revealed to have been working for Doom the whole time as he attacks Magus. Spidey takes a now-freed Nostro and grabs Xina as Doom activates a bomb, destroying Castle Doom as "two dynasties come to a cataclysmic end."
- The X-Men fight the Dreadnode, slowly but surely getting overtaken by it. Hodge helps Bloodhawk escape, paying the debt that he owed him for saving him in the first issue. Bloodhawk helps La Lunatica escape and Xi'an is inspired to do the same. Victor Ten-Eagles then arrives with the cavalry and takes on the Dreadnode on his own, apparently inspiring a legend in the future. Meanwhile, Franklin connects with the Phalanx and prepares to download his databases to its ship. Cerebra tells him not to do so, since it'll have access to the "secrets of humanity's destruction." She says that the Phalanx is evil, but Franklin dismisses that assertion, saying that the Phalanx is just trying to ensure its survival. However, upon communicating with the Phalanx, Franklin decides that it is evil when one of its members declares that its goal is to destroy all organic life. As such, Franklin destroys the planetoid, killing Smith, the Takers, and Twilight in the process. Smith and Twilight embrace before they die and December -- who managed to open the comm-link right before the explosion -- weeps. The remains of the planetoid then crash into a lake on Earth.
The Review
ARGH! I gave this issue yet another zero mainly because Raab and Kelly just fall completely to pieces here. We essentially have three different stories that could spell the end of the Phalanx: Spider-Man taking out Nostro, Doom activating his Trojan-Horse virus, and the Takers defeating the Phalanx on its planetoid. Each story essentially usurps the previous story as the most likely candidate to win, but, in the end, it's the deus ex machina - literally, from the machine - of Franklin destroying the Phalanx to save Earth that ends the story. However, we're given no reason why Franklin only now connects to the Phalanx, leaving open the question why he couldn't have done what he did here several issues ago. As a result, it makes you realize that most of the stories that have competed with each other throughout this series were completely unnecessary. In other words, most of this series was a huge waste of time, probably not Raab and Kelly's goal when they set out writing this story.
The Unknown
Winn announces that Doom isn't the only holdover from the Twentieth Century, implying that he's also from then. But, who the Hell is he?
The Bad
1) I still don't understand the Takers' connection to the Phalanx. This issue says that they're seeking revenge for the Phalanx invasion of a milennia ago, calling into question Smith's hypothesis that they actually created the planetoid that the Phalanx inhabit. If I try to pull all those threads together, I think that Raab and Kelly are saying that the Takers did create the planetoid, but the Phalanx took it from them to use in their own world dominations. However, again, Raab and Kelly don't actually draw that connection, making me feel like I should win a No-Prize for doing it for them.
2) Moreover, we never learn who sabotaged the spaceship that the Takers originally sent to Earth or how the Takers were somehow infected with the techno-organic virus, which at least one of them would have to have been in order for Nostro to become infected with it when he saved Willow after she "became" a Taker. My guess, then, is that the Phalanx did somehow sabotage the ship, implying that at least one member of the Phalanx remained on Mars after the rest of the species left. Why would one of it stay? I have other questions, but, at this point, I'm doing so much work for Raab and Kelly that I might as well stop and just move onto the next problem.
3) Continuing on the Takers, we never really get a sense of why Twilight did what she did. We had the implication that the Takers somehow amplified her powers and put her under their control, but, in the end, we're just left with vague assertions that she felt the need to put behind her immature ways and be responsible.
4) I'm still not sure why the Phalanx came when it did. After all these issues, we were never really given that information. I guess that it didn't necessarily need a reason, but I'm pretty sure, in the "Fantastic Four 2099" series, it was implied that someone called the Phalanx somehow.
5) Doom's plan seems to have been to get the Phalanx to terraform Latveria, restoring it to its previous condition. But, the art doesn't necessarily convey that and, in fact, Doom himself doesn't actually say that. Again, I'm just left filling in the narrative and artistic gaps.
The Really Bad
On one hand, the revelation that Doom created the "mutant messiah myth" to ferret out Nostro is cool, particularly since it probably offers readers of "X-Nation" the type of closure that I am looking to get when it comes to Gabe's whereabouts. (I wonder if we ever learned who the Cable-like figure from "2099 A.D. Genesis" was.) But, it actually hints at a more disappointing reality, the fact that this entire series was, in a way, just a promotion for the Phalanx storyline that I'm assuming had just happened in the X-books. I actually hated that event when it was happening, so I'm disappointed that I'm forced to read about the Phalanx once again, particularly given that the entire 2099 line was essentially sacrificed to it.
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