Uncanny X-Men #16 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

First, I have to say that I was surprised to learn that Mystique had actually bought Madripoor, since I thought that all the money that she gave Madame Hydra was destroyed in their fight with the original X-Men and the Uncanny Avengers in "All-New X-Men."  I'm going to research that a bit, but I'm willing to take it, since Bendis does such interesting things with the concept here.

First, I continue to feel like Bendis has the best read on Mystique of any author that I've ever read.  She's not just the amoral female manipulator that she's often portrayed as being.  Instead, she's actually acting on some principles here.  She's finally had enough of the power struggle between the Xavier (now Wolverine) camp and the Magneto (now Cyclops) camp.  She just wants to build a place where mutants can live peacefully.  I get that.  Moreover, because Mystique's exhaustion with the power struggle comes from some hard-won truths, she also realizes that places like the tropical paradise of Genosha or the aspirationally named "Utopia" were a bit too high-fallutin' when it came to a believable peace that mutants could actually live.  I totally buy the fact that Madripoor is probably more the mutants' style.  Embrace the chaos.

Her invitation for Magneto to join her and the other former Brotherhood members also feels right.  She notes that they all owe a debt to Magneto and, given that he's a diminished version of himself, she's essentially offering him a sort of retirement.  I enjoy her disdain for Scott (and shock at Magneto hiding with him), in part because you actually wonder if she's the only person who sees the situation clearly.  Scott is probably going to get everyone killed just like Xavier did, so she feels that she owes it to Magneto to free him from the Weapon X facility before it happens.  (Also, let's face it, she's right that Xavier was wrong in his hope that humans and mutants could ever peacefully co-exist and, by implication of her actions here, that Magneto is wrong that mutants are ever going to manage to be the dominant species.  Why not just settle on a nice morally challenged island and try to live the good life?)

Of course, Magneto's response -- seemingly murdering Mystique and her cohorts in anger over their betrayal of mutantkind -- is equally fascinating as Mystique's middle-ground philosophy.  In it, Bendis shows that Magneto hasn't give up his part of the dream, as he seems to have done.  He's not quietly going into the night.  He believes in mutant supremacy (as his dream sequence of killing humans advocating for mutant rights shows) and maybe he's now done pretending that he doesn't.  I think that we've just seen the old Magneto reborn (in part because his anger seemed to allow him use of his full powers again, something that proves that Mystique may also have been right when she said that his troubles with his powers were probably psychosomatic).

Exciting stuff.  I hope Bendis doesn't drop Mystique and her plans for Madripoor, because I think that we could really use that middle ground between Logan and Scott.  Add Magneto into the mix and suddenly we're looking at a very complicated power rectangle.

**** (four of five stars)