Age Of X-Man: X-Tremists #5 // Review
A world of illusion is a fragile thing. Sometimes all it takes is the right memory to make it all come crashing. to the ground. A woman with a gun jogs Jubilee’s memory in a wholly unexpected and unintentional way in the final issue of Age Of X-Man: X-Tremists. The members of Department X get angry in an issue written by Leah Williams. Art comes to the page courtesy of Georges Jeanty and inker Roberto Poggi. Williams and company bring a very succinct story to life that works well on its own while fitting well into the larger structure of the multi-title Age of X-Man event.
Jubilee is angry the streets are in flames. She’s got a baseball bat, and she’s using it. It’s 6:30 p.m. Earlier that same day, she was accosted by an escaped prisoner and her army of rats. The prisoner points a semiautomatic at Jubilee. The real shock, though is the baby that the escaped prisoner is cradling in the arm that isn’t holding the gun. Seeing the baby causes her to remember a baby from a life that has been stolen from her. She’s angry. It’s an anger that explodes in the final issue of the mini-series.
Williams has been piecing together bits of the Age of X-Man world for the shadowy operatives of Department X. Some of the characters have come across a bit better than others. Jubilee’s traumatic jolt of memory in this issue is clearly the most interesting of the series. Williams has kept the most jarringly disturbing element of life in Department X for the end of the series. It’s an approach that ends the mini-series with intense punctuation. Looking back on the series, it’s a bit disappointing that the overall plot construction had been so disjointed with every character getting the spotlight his or her own issue. Other characters ARE filtering through this issue...things get pretty heavy for Blob and Psylocke, but the final chapter of X-Tremists begins and ends rather symbolically with Jubilee and her maternal drive. The gestalt dynamic of everyone on the team and the dynamic between them would have been much more compelling with a more integrated approach to the plot.
Jeanty and Poggi are given a LOT of drama to bring to the page. The artists’ handling of Jubilee’s emotional fluctuations gives her psyche a vividly sketchy moodiness. She’s as conflicted as anyone else in the series. Jeanty and Poggi allow that conflict a place to rest in troubled glances and shades of uncertainty. The more explosive end of the rage doesn’t have quite the kick that it needs to truly combust off the page except in a few moments of aggression. The drama has its own kind of combustion thanks to clever work by Jeanty and Poggi. The panel revealing the escaped prisoner is powerful. She’s holding a rifle in one hand and a baby in another. Rats cluster around her feet. Clearly, things have gone very, very wrong, and a great many levels. Jeanty and Poggi deliver this and so many other still moments to the page with the right impact.
Once again, another Age of X-Man title draws to a close with ample power that suggests that it might have become much better if it had been allowed more than five issues’ room to breathe. Williams has had some very compelling moments scattered around the fast-moving deterioration of a grim dystopia. Given even twice the length of time, it has been allowed, the Age of X-Man could have developed into something with admirable complexity. In X-Tremists as with every other title it’s clear that this multi-mini series event has been a bit rushed.
