X-Men #7
The X-Men finally faces off against Doctor Stasis in X-Men #7, by writer Gerry Duggan, artist Pepe Larraz, Marte Gracia's colorist, and letterer Clayton Cowles. While this comic is better than it's been in the last three issues, and the art is amazing, it's as soulless as any other issue of this comic so far.
The issue is all about how Cyclops died. It moves from after he's been resurrected, where he has a talk with Emma and learns about the Captain Krakoa costume. It showcases the battle that killed him as well. Stasis sends hybrid animals after the X-Men. They rampage through New York City, and Cyclops, Synch, Wolverine, and Sunfire tackle them. One of them is able to injure Cyclops, and Stasis, posing as an EMT, finishes the job but not before telling Cyclops where to meet him when he comes back.
Saying that this is the best issue of this book since the beginning is damning it with faint praise. Literally, anything is better than the last three issues of this book and as simple as this book is, Duggan still botches part of it. Take the captions, for example. There's very little reason for them at all. It's possible that Duggan thought they were saying something that needed to be said, but like any other time there are captions in this book they’re entirely superfluous, especially with art this good. They're written so simplistically that they are just wasted space. Sometimes, it feels like they were written by a ten-year-old for a five-year-old.
Synch gets to have a cool moment, but most of the time, it feels like Duggan is just writing sets of powers instead of characters. The whole thing is frustrating because this entire plotline, Stasis discovering Krakoan resurrection and trying to use it against them, would be interesting if just about any other writer was writing. Imagine this plot in the hands of Ewing or Ayala or Percy or even Hickman when he was still on the X books, and one is faced with a much better-written story. Duggan writes a scene where Cyclops fires his optic blasts into a traffic light, and somehow, it shoots out of each light. This makes zero sense with how Cyclops's powers work, and it's yet another example of Duggan putting something "cool" in this book without knowing much about the actual characters.
Larraz and Gracia are the best part of this issue, but that's obvious in a book that's as shoddily written as this one. While the scene with Cyclops, his optic blasts, and the traffic light makes no sense, it looks great because Larraz and Gracia are amazing. The animal hybrids look great, and the fight scene is incredible. This issue, if nothing else, looks like a million bucks.
X-Men #7 is a comic with fantastic art. The writing doesn't match the art at all, but Duggan’s writing is merely bad in this issue, not as abysmal as it has been. At least he choreographed a nice action scene. Larraz and Gracia are the MVPs because of course they are. The art elevates the so-so writing.
