ingpolew.blogg.se

There's less room for Tolibao's visual whims and flourishes, and to be honest a lot of characters' faces are unappealing. Hellbound, on the other hand, is directly linked to the main X-Men narrative, forcing the storyline to act in a more traditional fashion. Psylocke brushed up against the X-Men world only tangentially, instead busying itself with Betsy's own personal adventures in Japan.

Harvey Tolibao reunites with his Psylocke collaborator on Hellbound, but unfortunately I found the artist's style was a better fit for Betsy Braddock's exploits than this squad's. She has a lot of trusts to earn, and it's somehow fitting that the only characters willing to risk their lives for her are essentially bullied into it. The overwhelming opinion on Utopia is that they're all better off without Illyana around, which sets up a good underdog angle for the newly returned New Mutant.

That said, Hellbound is more about Sam's new team and their history with Limbo than Illyana (who only appears in a flashback of a scene in New Mutants #12). Frankly, these underutilized faces are the ones I'd chose to read about over more overexposed team members like Wolverine, Psylocke, Emma, and Cyclops. For Hellbound, Chris Yost assembles a squad that has something for every X-fan, featuring Cannonball leading the likes of Northstar, Pixie, Gambit, Dazzler, Anole, and Trance. We saw that proven in Mike Carey's "Necrosha" tie-in issues of X-Men: Legacy, where Rogue led a team which included members from all corners of the mutant world like Magneto, Husk, and Blindfold. One of the better features of the Utopia angle in the X-books is that with most of the mutants in one place, any dream team lineup could be just around the corner.