Off the Rack: X-Men Forever “Still Behind” Edition #7

Off the Rack: X-Men Forever “Still Behind” Edition #7

A rough breakdown of the issue would be as follows:

Page 1: S.H.I.E.L.D. troops seen investigating “footprint” found in the jungle of the Andes Mountains

Page 2: Nick Fury and the X-Men are at the school talking to the S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers, Beast is trying to convince Fury to send in the X-Men to help.

Pages 3-4: In the Andes Mountains Fury’s men are attacked by something. They cannot make out what it is; only that it is “huge”.

Pages 5-6: Fury and the X-Men hear Fury troopers die in battle. They try to make contact and cannot. Professor Xavier confirms all soldiers are dead. Beast wants answer’s and wants to travel to the Andes Mountains himself.

Pages 7-11: Xavier calls for the rest of the X-Men. Beast thinks these issues could be related to Bolivar Trask (the man who created the Sentinels).  Fury and the X-Men argue for a page or so, Fury says that S.H.I.E.L.D. can handle this but finally the X-Men convince him otherwise. Fury agrees to use their help. Cyclops assigns the team of Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, Rogue and Kitty Pryde for the mission. Beast convinces Cyclops he is needed and he is added to the team.

Pages 12-18: During the flight to the Andes Mountains, Fury tells Jean about one of the soldiers that was killed today. The only name Fury’s gives us is “Tommy”. Tommy was the great nephew of Junior Juniper, one of the men killed in Fury’s Howling Commando’s back in World War II. This leads into a flashback about a raid on a Nazi base that was full of all sorts of hardware, experiments and weapons. The Howling Commando’s were sent in to destroy everything.   Wolverine was one of Fury’s men on the squad and during the raid he killed Dietrich Trask, a German scientist. So the Trask connection evolves.

Pages 19-22: The X-Men and Fury arrive at the Andes Mountain location only to find the bodies of the dead S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers, all equipment, all vehicles, and weapons are gone. Even the giant footprint has disappeared. The X-Men scout around some, when all of a sudden they are attacked by a Sentinel, to be continued.  

I guess Steve Scott (pencils) and Al Vey (inks) are the new art team for this story arc. At times the artwork is very nice and others it is quite painful. As I was reading this issue I thought there were two different people drawing this book but I was sadly mistaken. Maybe they just need some time on the book to get a feel for the characters so I will reserve final judgment at some point later. The nicer pages give fans of the book a lot of hope. 

The story, what can I say about it that I haven’t said before? Not much really. Claremont seems to have characters acting out of character just to be different. Beast seems to have a new attitude about him;  several times in this issue alone, he comes off snarky, as if he had a chip on his shoulder or something to prove. This Claremont-verse incarnation of Beast is not the same one we read by the same author all these years prior.

Change is good? Maybe for some, in this issue we see change in attire for some of the X-Men. Remy Picard (Gambit) is now wearing a suit and trench coat, no mask and had his hair slicked back. He still has his gloves on and carries his trademark staff. Kitty Pryde (Shadow Cat) has gone to a darker goth-lite look, with streaked purple dyed hair. Beast now supports a long style spandex type pants, instead of the blue bikini briefs. Rogue and Nightcrawler also look to have a new variant costume on as well. Not sure why all the costume changes in the beginning of this series. All I can say to Uncle Chris is this “you can polish a turd all you want but at the end of the day it’s still a turd”.    

See you next week.

Related posts:

1. Off the Rack: X-Men Forever “OVERDUE” Edition #6
2. Off the Rack: X-Men Forever “LONG OVERDUE” Edition #5
3. Off the Rack: X-Men Forever Edition #4
4. Off the Rack: X-Men Forever Edition #1
5. Off the Rack: X-Men Forever Edition #3