X-Men Gold vol. 3: Mojo Worldwide

It’s the first crossover of the latest relaunch and the results are… decidedly meh.  Wheeling out Mojo as the bad guy for this event certainly had potential as his evil-TV-producer-from-another-dimension schtick does give the creators a chance to cut loose and come up with some crazy scenarios.  The problem here is that co-writers Marc Guggenheim and Cullen Bunn never really go that far. We get members of the Gold and Blue teams thrust into approximations of familiar scenarios like “Inferno” and “X-Tinction Agenda” as well as settings like Asgard.  The creators start mixing things up with these setups towards the end, but it all boils down to having the X-Men fight a whole bunch of bad guys in ways that we’ve seen many times before. There’s also an attempt at satire in the acknowledgements that revisiting these famous scenes is all part of giving the fans what they want, and part of Marvel’s whole “Legacy” initiative as well, except that it’s as toothless as you’d expect.

 

Is there anything of value to be had from this crossover?  Well, it offers further proof that Bunn is the better of the two current flagship “X-Men” writers as his dialogue lacks the canned, expository feeling that Guggenheim’s has in his issues.  Jorge Molina delivers some good art in the “Blue” issues that would’ve been better served by brighter coloring, while the artists working on “Gold” get better with each issue from the robotic-looking Mike Mayhew, the more sprightly Marc Laming, and the actually quite good work of Diego Bernard.  As for major plot developments, it’s revealed to the members of the “Gold” team that Magneto is still alive. So that counts, I guess?

 

Really, all “Mojo Worldwide” did was remind me how good the last Mojo story I read in the pages of “Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine” was.  Jason Aaron pushed the story as crazy as he could go and Adam Kubert backed him up by delivering some truly astounding visuals.  This crossover was complete weaksauce in comparison and the fact that Mojo will be sticking around in the Marvel Universe at the end of it does not strike me as a promising development.

 

jason@glickscomicpicks.com