X-Men: Blinded By The Light

Collects X-Men #200-204 written by Mike Carey with art by Humberto Ramos, Chris Bachalo and Mike Choi.

This book starts pretty much where X-Men: Supernovas ended. The X-Men, led by Rogue who is still suffering from being the unfortunate host of some 8 billion alien minds, is investigating a series of mysterious murders, which leads them into an ambush set up by the Marauders. To make matters worse, the Marauders have planted traitors in the X-Men's midst, and the X-Men face defeat at the hands of their enemies. Only Iceman and Cannonball manage to escape, and they must try to find out what the Marauder's true goal is. This leads them back to the X Mansion, where more mayhem ensues, again with the defeat of the X-Men as the end result. Meanwhile, New X-Woman Blindfold is having disturbing visions of the future, and the book ends with her setting up the stage for the next big X-event, Messiah Complex.

As usual with Carey, a lot of stuff is going on here, and the reader better pay attention, or important details might go lost. Also, this book is not for the uninitiated, and solid knowledge of most matters X is an advantage. Old fans will cheer (or grind their teeth, it depends I guess...) at the return of Gambit, and although a Gambit/Rogue subplot is not taken to it's end, there is certainly one set up here. There are a couple of surprises here, namely the traitors (no names given here...) and the return of Gambit, and this, combined with a good dose of well executed action, makes for a very entertaining read. One thing that I particularly enjoyed was that the X-Men really get their behinds handed to them in this book without actually accomplishing anything, something which we rarely see to this degree.

The focus in this book is on minor X-characters, mostly Iceman and Cannonball and the New X-Men is also given a good deal of space. Iceman and Cannonball are both interesting characters. They compliment each other well, and turn out to be good vehicles for keeping the story moving. Given the number of characters and the amount of pages dedicated to action scenes, however, character moments can seem rushed, but I guess this isn't really what the fans crave anyway...

The story is divided into four chapters and an epilogue, and the idea is obviously that it will lead up to Messiah Complex. How this flows together with Endangered Species, another lead-up to Messiah Complex, I don't know, but the stories ran in the same issues, so I guess it all works out.

The art is all very good, with Ramos handling most of it and doing a good job. Whether you like Ramos' distinct style is a matter of taste, I personally think it suits the X-Men well, and I particularly enjoy the action scenes. The combination of Iceman and Cannonball make for some quite spectacular visuals at times, and the sheer number of different characters being put on the pages here is quite mind numbing. The only complaint I have here is that the art of the main story and the art of the epilogue are so different in style, that the visual cohesiveness of the book is degraded some, but one might argue that Choi's style actually suits the epilogue better than Ramos's would. Although Choi is obviously an accomplished artist, I don't really fancy the way he makes the eyes look as if they were air brushed on the page, I think it looks a little girlie...

This was in many ways a very satisfying read, but you should be warned that it's pretty complex due to the dense plot and large number of characters appearing. Of course, many, including myself, see this as a good thing, and it is one of the reasons the X-Men have such a strong fan base. The book continues in the same vein as X-Men: Supernovas, but overall it's more focused, and this provides for a slightly better read. It's hard to set them apart, though, and they could just as well have been collected as one book. X-Men: Blinded... doesn't really stand on it's own storywise, so if you decide to get it, you should be prepared to also make shelf space for at least X-Men: Messiah Complex and probably also X-Men: Supernovas.

7/10