Fall of the House of X #4 - Review/Spoilers

[jsg2295]

In the spirit of X-MEN 97… imagine if 25 years from now they had X-MEN 24 and had to work with this crap.

[lefthanded]

They really, really should have. Alas, it was more important not to bruise egos or hurt feelings than it was to close the era on a high point.

This issue was better than previous ones, but that's not saying a lot. Much like his X-Men issues, it feels like Duggan is just running through a checklist of things that have to happen.

Apocalypse saves Krakoa - check. (What happened to Juggernaut, btw? Wasn't he defending Krakoa?)
Wrap up Wrongslide so Santo can come back - check.
Destroy the Summers House - check.
Bring in Sentinel City then immediately destroy it - check.

And on and on. It's such a shame that a truly interesting and daring era like Krakoa is ending with this mess. Gillen is doing a good job on RotPoX and Forever, but even those two books can't put a shine on FotHoX and X-Men. Even the Iron Man book is struggling now, and I've been a defender of Duggan's work on it. I think it's obvious that he bit off far more than he could chew, and all his books are now suffering for it.

Agreed.
What should be a goose bump inducing moment ("Storm flying through space to save the day") instead just feels like a checklist moment ("Storm appear in event series").

There is a lack of care in building up characters/actions to make it all connected. Instead, Xavier randomly inserts himself into the scene because the plot calls for it. Storm randomly inserts herself in the end, because her day job (Resurrection of Magneto) is done so now she can move onto the evening shift. Had Duggan seeded more scenes throughout Fall of X, or even Fall of House of X, it would make everything tie together much better.

And then, the things that Duggan does spend time (not a lot of time, mind you, but some time) building up, like the Sentinel City, he resolves super quickly.
Extinction level event, as one of the mutants states? Ok, we'll just teleport a space station into it, using just one mutant's baseline powers. Its not like it even required a mutant circuit, or some type of sacrifice to do.

And besides, Duggan already did this, in the same miniseries! Orchis/Nimrod has a space station, and a mutant (Lorna/Manifold) use a metal object (Knowhere/Sword) to deactivate it. Lorna/Storm fly through space with their energy fields up, ready to take on Orchis/Nimrod. This is repetitive stuff that lacks impact.

I sure hope Manifold spends the next issue just teleporting the adamantium skeletons of dead Wolverine clones into Nimrod's, as the readers are given no reason why this wouldn't work.

The impact of everything happening just doesn't land because things are happening haphazardly without good connections, or things are just getting resolved too simply.