Gillen throws a lot of resistance from Sinister here at the Phoenix 5 and I wonder if Sinister really is that strong. He seems stronger than the Avengers to be taking on all these bigwigs. That said, he uses his assortment of clones pretty well and Gillen uses his Brit-savvy into an array of intricate plots. Sinister wants to extricate the Phoenix Force and while he incapacitates the 5 stars a bit too easily, the Scott and Pryor arcs are just too salivating.
Luke Ross impressed me when I saw his art on Captain America recently. I could not profess how much I’d love to see him and Esad Ribic keep at it on this book with Hickman and Humphries. Following a bolstered 9-issue run, we see Reed Richards plummeting SHIELD and USA into despair. The despot known as Richards has wreaked havoc unto Fury, Tian – haven for the Xorn twins, and Asgard. Thor and Stark continue to wallow in self pity until Sue Storm injects some intrigue to the tale.
Nick Spencer is one of the young guns at Marvel and after loving his Indie work at Image and being a keen admirer of his early Morning Glories material, I loved the fact that Marvel had him try to resuscitate this flailing line which I think could only be touched by Mark Millar or Jon Hickman. Please, Jeph Loeb…keep your Ultimatum to yourself. That said, Paco Medina has always impressed me on X-Men and Deadpool, and I think is one of the most unheralded, underrated artists in the stable.
Aaron is his usual deft self here. His guile is properly bemused as he paints the obvious underdog Magneto into a hole…but Erik pulls a few aces from his sleeve to shock Stark a bit. Limitless resources or not, Aaron delivers quite solidly here…and I thought it was Fraction writing for a while. It was pretty impressive coupled with Kubert’s nifty art schemes. Aaron’s aptitude for snarky yet un-cheesy dialogue and Kubert’s apt style make an enthralling read. It shows that even Magneto realizes that biting off too much than they can chew will be a profound way to
