Guardians of the Galaxy #17 (August 18): This issue trips a bit over the ever-confusing Cosmic Marvel continuity, as the issue's big reveal - that Ego and Galactus at some point bonded, meaning that the Dormammu-dominated Ego is now the Dormammu-dominated Galactus - comes after a lot of exposition. Do I understand? No, not really.
For me, the most relevant part of the story is Rich trying to convince everyone that they're trusting Doom way too much. Ewing makes it seem like Rich is just immature as always, and everyone but Gamora ignores him. (Remember those sparks?) But, as Doom takes advantage of Dormammu conquering Chitauri Prime to colonize it for his Rigellian allies, the rest of the team reconsiders Rich's position. I'm always thrilled when we treat Rich like an adult.
All that said, this issue does reveal Dormammu's plan: he's invading five ancestral worlds that form a pentagram to bring our dimension into his dimension. In other words, it's pretty low stakes. :)
Marauders #23 (August 18): This issue starts poorly, as I had to Google a bit to discover what the fuck happened to the Marauder. It's a poor showing to have the fate of the series' titular ship determined in a different series with nary an editor's note to tell us what the fuck happened. The rest of this issue is fine, though, as Emma, Jumbo Carnation, Kate, and Tempo help Banshee stop rivals mobs from stealing Krakoa's medications from an Irish warehouse. I'll be honest that I wish we'd stop focusing so much on Emma at the expense of characters like Bishop, Iceman, and Shadowcat. But, we'll see where we go as the dust from the Hellfire Gala continues to settle.
Moon Knight #2 (August 18): Cappuccio is spectacular in depicting this issue's villain lost in the sea of Marc's god-touched mind. He builds the tension panel by panel to the moment when an enormous and monstrous Moon Knight appears in the villain's mindscape to destroy his mind. In terms of the plot, the unnamed spectator hired the villain to confront Moon Knight. We also start rounding out Marc's supporting cast here, as I'm pretty sure Soldier is going to appear again after Marc saved him and his mother from the villain and his mind-controlling sweat. I mean, how could you not?
Sinister War #3 (August 18): I mean, Spencer is really drawing out this story, but he does a better job making this issue fill less like the filler that last one was. At some point, you start to wonder if Spidey really has a hope of surviving. Usually, he manages to swing to safety, but so many villains are after him that he never gets that break. It's hard to believe that we only have one more issue.
X-Men: Trial of Magneto #1 (TPB) (August 18): This issue is spectacular and as such difficult to review. The summary doesn't quite do the emotions justice.
X-Force and the X-Men watch as X-Factor investigates Wanda's murder, discovering that a supernatural magnetized object strangulated her to death. Suspicion obviously falls onto Magneto, who loses his fucking mind when the Quiet Council refuses to resurrect her. He almost kills Professor X with Cerebro and sermonizes about the Council's "hopelessly antediluvian human concept[s]." It's just like the old days.
X-Factor tries to arrest him after he storms from the Grove; to put it mildly, he resists arrest. Polaris arrives to try to stop him, and he's brutal, calling her "unhinged and inconsistent at [her] best." Lorna is withering in her response, asking: "How many women is it now you once claimed to love who all perished during your brief window of affection and attention?"
Before X-Factor and the X-Men can stop him, Quicksilver arrives and almost beats him to death. Northstar stops him, and Quicksilver breaks into sobs on his shoulder. (In one of the best "Dawn/Reign of X" scenes, Pietro arrives at the Blob's bar and has a drink with him, Mastermind, and Toad.) Logan asks Jean if she can read Magneto's mind, but she says that his subconscious is just a nightmare of grief. The issue ends with Wanda on some other plane of existence revealing that she's dead but also not dead at the same time.
This issue is a tense procedural until Lorna's and Pietro's grief leap off the page. Although the Krakoan mutants should have known that grief drove Magneto's actions in the Grove, Jean reading his mind makes it clear that he's just as hysterical as Lorna and Pietro are. It seems pretty clear that he didn't do it, and I'm a little surprised how quickly all the Krakoan mutants accept that he did.
Going forward, we have a number of unanswered questions. Professor X says that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were able to trick Cerebro into thinking that they were mutants, so back-up versions of them do exist. But, I don't get how they did so. Did Wanda do it? In "Uncanny Avengers" #4, we learned that the High Evolutionary gave them their powers. Why would Cerebro ever read them as mutants if they don't have the X-gene? Are we preparing to re-ret-con this development? Also, the obvious question is: if Magneto didn't kill her, who did? Virtually every mutant wanted her dead, as the celebrations after her death show. It's part of the reason that I'm surprised everyone jumped to the conclusion that Magneto did it.
All I know is that once Billy learns that she's dead, someone is going to have Hell to pay.
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