Shadow and Flame with Magik

Writer Brian Michael Bendis

Pencils & Colors Chris Bachalo

Inks Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza, Al Vey, Mark Irwin and Victor Olazara

Lettering & Production VC’s Joe Caramagna

I know I state this every time, but I do enjoy Bachalo’s art.

Cyclops is having his students climb a steep mountain, without using their powers.

We find out through Angel’s dialogue, that this issue takes place before the All New team and Kitty join Cyclops’ side.  They are coming, just not there yet.

Magik thinks teaching a young Jean Grey will be hilarious.  Funny double take from Emma and Scott.

This issue is essentially the Benjamin Deeds spotlight issue.

Cyclops asks Benjamin to throw a punch.  Cyclops throws the first one, Benjamin goes down hard.  He eventually tries and Cyclops takes him down again.

Nice panel transition from Benjamin getting rain on outside, to showering inside.  Triage tries to make him feel better.  Benjamin is heading to his room, when Emma surprises him and he drops his towel.  She comments on it, matter of factly.

Emma is wearing a type of sexy lady Punisher shirt / dress.  I enjoy Emma the most, when she is teaching and mentoring.  She is going to figure out how his power works and make him full.  Instead of him using his power as a reflex, he should control it.

Emma figures out that his power is not just shape shifting, he does something on a chemical level.  Making the person he is with, comfortable with him, no matter what he looks like or with.

Emma and Magik teleport Benjamin to Atlantic City.  I sort of love the dresses Illyana and Emma are wearing.  Illyana needs a stylish friend.  As much as I love Kitty, she isn’t quite the fashionista – she is the type of dame who just likes to be comfortable.  Their dresses look simple, short black dresses, but also very sleek.

Emma finds Benjamin’s first target and task.  She may have made up the word ‘transmorph’ though it sounds familiar.

Benjamin reveals he is gay, but it comes across as just one of his excuses to get out of the mission.  He tries it and fails miserably.

He finds a lady Kubrick fan, Gemma, and via his powers, turns her from turned off to friendly.  It is nice to see him grow in confidence.

We get a bigger panel of the blondes in their nice dresses.  I hate to draw attention to this type of detail, especially of Bachalo, but in showing tone in Emma’s legs, it looks like you can see Emma’s vagina, which is unfortunate.

We get a great montage on Benjamin using his powers and getting stronger.  Cyclops gets a real mission for Benjamin to complete.  Benjamin enters a building to deliver a letter.  Turns out his power also works on electronics.  We find out that this is a SHIELD office building and Benjamin’s mission is to give Dum Dum Dugan a letter from Cyclops.

We get one of those unfortunate things where in a comic, we get to see the letter Cyclops wrote.  But we actually see the words of the letter and if you think about it, it makes no sense.  We get what must be words on a page, but if it was really typed out, there would be so much white space on that page.  Dugan would surely think Cyclops was a fool.  Scott’s letter is about telling SHIELD to stop their own Sentinel program or SHIELD will be at work with the X-Men.

We find out that once Benjamin is out of vicinity, his powers don’t leave a permanent mark, people figure out something was not right.  SHIELD agents are about to take Benjamin down and Magik teleports him out.

Issue ends with Benjamin needing a codename, Emma tries out Morph.  We will have to see if it takes off or not.  I like seeing Cyclops with the red glasses and no cowl.  He should use that look more, maybe I just like seeing his hair.