'X-Men: Schism' Issue #2: Review
The following review contains spoilers.
The most apparent problem with X-Men: Schism Issue #2, and the series in general, is the complete lack of subtlety in the writing. The opening panel is a bunch of angry Middle Eastern men shouting “KILL THE MUTANTS! KILL THE MUTANTS!” while their leader, who looks suspiciously like a balding version of Iran’s current president, throws out lines like “Mutants are an American problem! There are no mutants in our land!” Before the first page is over, writer Jason Aaron has already connected the troubles of a group of superheroes with tension in the Middle East and homophobia.
Except he doesn’t need to: Aaron here isn’t using real-life events to make social or psychological insights a la Alan Moore; the scenes with real-life politics just tell us that mutants are being persecuted and that the Middle East is volatile, something anyone reading the book would know. It feels less like a genuine attempt to be “relevant” and more of a crude attempt to sell more comics by exploiting real-life violence.
Kade Kilgore, the 12-year-old villain, is the other weak point of the series. Making a villain a 6th-grader is a sure-fire way of preventing readers from taking him seriously; it’s also another example of crass sensationalism, by randomly making a murderer a 12-year-old for shock value, even though it wouldn’t have made a difference on the plot if he’d been an adult. Now Kade has a little girl in pigtails and a pink shirt as a minion who dual-wields swords and enjoys butchering people.
The plot itself is more palatable, though it has the potential to turn sour. Kade deliberately designs 75 percent of the world’s sentinels to be faulty for reasons of his own, and the X-Men attend the opening of a mutant’s rights museum that’s attacked by the now anti-mutant Hellfire Club; if nothing else, this issue promises action. The key turning point in this issue, however, is Kid Omega sneaking into the X-Mansion to demand sanctuary from his crimes in Issue 1. Cyclops agrees, despite Wolverine’s protests, and even lies to Captain America to protect him…a plot point just begging for the X-Mansion to be invaded once the world finds out, in what will undoubtedly be a convenient plot twist.
Presumably, this is one of the events which will turn Cyclops and Wolverine against each other, but one has to wonder if Cyclops' actions here are in character. He gives Quire shelter because he wants him to be “tried by peers”…which implies that he no longer thinks humans and mutants are equal peers. Has he really become that isolationist over the past few years? Hopefully, Cyclops and Wolverine’s actions will stay plausible and in-character throughout the series, and not delve into an idiotic Conflict Ball.
Again, the character moments vary. The highlight of this comic is the X-Men sending female and Jewish mutants to Not-Ahmadinejad's country on purpose to flout his xenophobia; as awkward as Schism’s politics are, there would be no problem with this series if every page had Kitty Pryde troll sexist, anti-Semitic xenophobes. Unfortunately, this issue also has a scene where Emma Frost punishes Kid Omega for initiating genocide and being rude to his protectors by…making him wet his pants, and everyone knows that Emma Frost is too awesome to do something so crude and childish. What happened to the days when she made her enemies vomit for two hours straight?
In short, X-Men: Schism #2 has clumsy politics, a poor main villain, a mixed-bag of character moments, and an action-filled plot that would hopefully remain more good than bad. At $3.99, this issue still doesn’t have enough good content to make it worth buying, but the series on a whole is not entirely without hope.