Shadow and Flame with Magik

Written by Brian Wood

Penciled by David Lopez

Inked by Cam Smith with Norman Lee

Colored by Cris Peter

The cover threw me off and I was reading the second page and thought the Dodsons changed their style for this like how Coipel did or that Peter’s coloring changed the tone of the art.  Turns out, we are being treated to David Lopez, who does a great job here.

This issue gives us two stories: Jubilee and Wolverine / X-Men rescuing a plane full of people.

The Jubilee portion handles that she is still a vampire, so those fans can calm down.  I like how Wood takes advantage of writing a Marvel comic and has technology be reason why she can enjoy the daytime.  Such an easy fix but a clever one.  Sure, if there is a nice vampire out there, Reed Richards would take the time to make her life easier.

Lopez does a good job if capturing Shogo being a baby.

This has been the best portrayal of Wolverine in some time.  I like these quiet issues.  It is almost like the calm before the storm.

Wolverine buys Jubilee’s old house, that’s nice.  Who knows when a East coast team member will ever get the time to enjoy it, but she has it – Logan bought it, he hasn’t gifted it.  Plus, she was off a team for quite some time, so she will be off this team eventually too.

Really like how Storm is drawn and colored, she looks like a queen of her environment, though I am falling out of love with Storm.  It might be because Rachel is questioning Storm’s leadership role, shedding light on how I don’t like Storm just taking the role of leader.  If there was a team that didn’t need one person in command, it is this team.

I’m sure Rogue has used Psylocke’s powers before, but now that Rogue is at a power set of zero, that when you only have Psylocke’s, it must be pretty exciting.

I like also how Psylocke is still training her powers and abilities in the Danger Room.

Not exactly sure what Kitty was doing during the plan, it was probably her own plan and she was overseeing it.

Pretty nice done-in-one issue.

The only thing that bothered me in this issue was Storm mentioning Rachel’s relationship with John Sublime.  Which I’m not even sure if that is a relationship.  As far as I saw, he was flirting with Rachel and Rachel just wasn’t stomping on his attempts.  I don’t believe that means anything.  Plus, she hasn’t had any relationships since her original one with Franklin Richards.  And it isn’t even like she’s carrying that torch with her, we have never seen her missing those days.  And how could she miss those days, as those were horrible days.  That and she will be getting a glimpse of that soon with Battle of the Atom.  Though she doesn’t know that just yet.

Storm deciding to have Rachel kill Omega Sentinel was a poor decision and I agree with Rachel, every time Omega Sentinel is having a good day, this X-Men team will remember that she could not be experiencing due to Storm’s decision.