Amazing Spider-Man #4: Other than the MJ sub-plot, this issue is everything I want a Spider-Man story to be.
Kareem saves Peter before Tombstone's goon shoots him in the head. Kareem tells Peter that Tombstone is also gunning for Robbie (in addition to planning the 125th massacre to pin on the Rose). Peter makes his way through Tombstone's hideout in the hopes that he can stop the massacre before it begins. Along the way, he manages to call Randy to warn him about his father.
Of course, it turns out Tombstone made Peter do his dirty work: Peter wasn't below Tombstone's hideout, but the Rose's. Man, if only we had more villains like Wells' Tombstone!
Meanwhile, Tombstone apparently just wanted to have a man-to-man talk with Robbie now that they're going to be family. Rubbing salt in that wound, the issue starts with MJ speaking with her daughter, who looks almost exactly like her so maybe isn't her step-daughter? In sum, Tombstone gets a happy ending with family and Peter gets...well, not a happy ending.
In other words, it's a spectacular issue from start to finish.
Immortal X-Men #3: I still feel like I'm reading this series more from obligation than anything Gillen is doing here. Like the other issues, I came close to skimming as Destiny monologued as she always does.
To save you the time, Destiny has the same precognitive explosion - presumably due to her new body - as she did when her powers first manifested when she turned 13 years old. Many of these visions relate to Mr. Sinister's cloning of Moira, as her powers allow him to dominate future timelines. When something goes wrong for him, he simply resets the timeline.
Awakened from the explosion-induced coma, Destiny now must find a way to stop Sinister without tipping her hand to other Council members, given her lack of trust in them. (To show she isn't crazy for thinking that way, Charles' continued asshole behavior gets so bad in this issue that even Kate calls him on it.) Destiny's real sorrow comes from the fact that she doesn't see Raven in any of these timelines. As Raven is the only person she trusts, she's a woman alone.
The only interesting part of this issue for me was Gillen cleverly ret-coning Destiny's previous death as necessary for Krakoa to come into existence. Destiny now realizes that she would've killed Moira as planned, preventing the sequences of events that led to Krakoa happening. At the time, Destiny only knew her death was necessary, since, as we know, she couldn't see Moira. In the Krakoa era, I appreciate it when authors take the time to make Krakoa seem inevitable, even if we didn't know it at the time.
Knights of X #3: Enh. I'm finding it increasingly hard to engage with this mini-series, because every time we seem close to moving to the story's next phase Howard throws up a roadblock.
Here, Betsy and her team make their way to the stronghold where the Sevalithi are holding Death. (According to the editor's note, the Sevalithi imprisoned him after his defeat in "X of Swords." I have no recollection of that, so I assume that it happened in Howard's "Excalibur.") Death informs Betsy that Apocalypse was obsessed with the Siege Perilous, and Rictor realizes that Apocalypse's grimoire has the answer to its location. Building off Doug's email to Rictor last issue, Rictor gives the grimoire to Death to read, and Death confirms that it details Apocalypse giving the Siege Perilous to Mercator to start his land. I don't recognize Mercator or his land, but I'm sure we'll get there.
Meanwhile, Rachel is finally able to connect telepathically with Betsy (probably because it's daylight in Sevalith, reducing the vampires' powers). To Mordred's disappointment, Shatterstar teleports the team to the Crooked Market to help. It all goes to Hell when Merlyn arrives, and Gambit sacrifices himself in attacking Merlyn so Meggan can free Crooked Jim. Gambit somehow seems confident in his resurrection, even though I'm pretty sure that the Five can't resurrect mutants who die in Otherworld? Is the Siege Perilous going to do it? I guess we'll see.
At any rate, the Crooked Jim story hopefully related somehow to the Siege Perilous story since, at this point, I'm wondering why we've spent so much time on it. It feels like Howard didn't have enough story related to the Siege Perilous for five issues so she cooked up this sideplot. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Moon Knight #12: Marc's fight with Zodiac surprisingly wraps up here. That said, no one is more surprised about it than Marc. Why? Brilliantly, McKay has Steve Grant take control of their shared body. Steve does so because he's concerned that Reese will see Marc differently if she watches him kill Zodiac. To be fair to Marc, he was going to kill Zodiac to save Reese from doing it because he was worried it would change her. (Reese was going to do it because Zodiac shot Soldier after he realized that he wasn't Moon Knight. I'm just hoping Soldier really isn't dead.)
In addition to this unexpected twist, McKay is a delight throughout this issue as he uses every character in the roster to their fullest potential. The path that Khonshu opened for Marc and Tigra goes right through the resting place in the Afterworld of the Firsts of Khonshu (which is news to Marc). After the former Fists follow Marc and Tigra to Earth and wind up helping them take out Zodiac's goons, a now-freed Hunter's Moon returns them to their rest, since, after all, Marc doesn't know how to do so. With everyone pissed at Zodiac, I can't wait to see how this crew is going to handle Steve and goody two shoe-ness.
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