Writer Charles Soule
Artist Juan Doe
Letterer VC’s Cory Petit
Final Issue!
New York City. The Law Offices of Paine & Luckberg, LLP. Two Days Ago. Mystique dropped off a box years ago to be delivered on a certain date. I like how Mystique wrote her real name and her codename in quotes.
The Flordia Everglades. Near Citrusville. Now. Mystique is surprised by the appearance of Man-Thing, which seems odd as it isn’t like he isn’t an unknown character. Man-Thing rocks! Even Portal knows who Man-Thing is.
Elsewhere in the Swamp. Shogun explains that Sinister made it so that Ogun is locked away somewhere inside Sharp’s head.
Siphon is also in the room and starts attacking those with a healing factor – Sabretooth, X23 and Deathstrike.
Man-Thing is burning Mystique, as she isn’t afraid of him, she’s afraid of losing this opportunity to bring Destiny back to life. She starts talking about her love for Destiny and he releases her.
Siphon starts draining X23’s healing factor but she cuts him deeply. He drops them both and goes after Lady Deathstrike. Shogun steps in and starts really letting into him – cutting even deeper. Daken shouts that now Siphon will come at Lady Deathstrike even harsher. Daken tries to imply that Lady Deathstrike is incapable of love.
Lady Deathstrike jumps into the fight so that Shogun isn’t on his own. Shogun is taken down, pretty easily.
Shogun drains Lady Deathstrike’s healing factor, he comes to his senses. Just then, Portal appears and takes Siphon with him. Portal is impress that Mystique fought off Man-Thing. He wants her to give him the Zhulong, a Chinese artifact. Portal shoots the magical harpoon at Siphon, to steal Siphon’s excess energy. Portal teleports Shiphon away.
Mystique wants Portal to teleport her to a spot in the multiverse.
Back with the Wolverines, X23 is without her healing factor for the first time. She wonders when the pain stops, and Daken tells her that it doesn’t. Sabretooth wants to go after Siphon, and he teleports right in front of them. They know that Siphon has been drained again and by that, they know that Mystique must be near by. Daken wants to use Siphon as a bloodhound to track Mystique.
Portal opens a . . . portal to where Mystique wants to go. Once she gets there, she can break a crystal to close it.
Mystique is about to step through the portal when the Wolverines arrive. She tells them that they don’t need them anymore and that they can leave. Lady Deathstrike rips off Siphon’s head. She says something completely dumb – even without their healing factors, they can still kill. Like, of course they can – why wouldn’t they be able to?
Mystique throws a smoke bomb and no one can sniff her out. Mystique as Daken stabs X23 to her gut.
X23 stabs Sabretooth. Sabretooth slashes Daken. Lady Deathstrike and Shogun face off.
Mystique walks through the portal, the delivery gal gives her the box and takes off. She opens the box and there is a letter from Destiny. She lied to Mystique. Mystique was never meant to bring back Destiny from the dead. Destiny knew that, once Wolverine died, everybody would die so she created this situation that should keep Mystique alive.
Destiny wants Mystique to bring Logan back to life. Mystique rather let the world burn and breaks the crystal, closing that door. Which is pretty bad arse. It does feel super cheap that this has been twenty issues of no payoff but we got some excellent Ogun moments but was it worth it? Time will tell but I imagine come a year from now, no one would be discussing this series.
Marvel, I have to give them credit, got nineteen issues of a weekly series out on time. This issue was delayed a week but people credit that to having been delayed for Secret War 2015 but I’m not sure why this issue didn’t come out prior to issue one of that series, that would have made more sense.
Decent series, I wouldn’t recommend buying any of the trades – or if you do, only the Sinister trades – so the first and last ones.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 