Writer Simon Spurrier

Penciler Tan Eng Huat

Inker Craig Yeung

Color Arist Jose Villarrubia

Letterer VC’s Cory Petit

Look how amazing Mike Del Mundo’s cover is!  Love that if you shave Legion’s ridiculous hairstyle, he sort of looks like his father.

Now, due to Hastings’ inability to actually keep track of their comic shipments, I don’t have issue 23, so I had to add it to my Wishlist as well as play catch up with this issue.

This issue opens with the conclusion of David and Blindfold’s mind sexcapades.  They tell each other that they love each other.

Once done, it is now on to the conclusion to this wonderful series.  One of them will not survive this final confrontation, as it has been predetermined since the beginning of the series.

Blindfold has to stop David from taking control of all mutant minds in the world and he has to stop her from stopping him and knowing true power.  He is on a course he cannot stop.  Blindfold is capable of stopping David, but she can’t bring herself to do it so now it is up to him to either stop himself or continue with his destiny.

David and Ruth are in his mindscape.  He is down to his core personality and the Weaver, the final personality that has yet to be absorbed.  David can’t bring himself to kill Ruth or watch as she dies so he closes his eyes.  David goes on about how he rules him.

David wonders what would have been if his life was a little different.  If Xavier stuck with his mother, Gabrielle Haller.  He feels like he could never live up to his father’s example nor could he do anything about it.  David could never match, be or impress Xavier.  Legacy is another word for burden.

He realizes that he has to stop complaining and has to start doing the mature thing.  We get a nice panel recapping with images what has come before, we see Pete Wisdom, Abigail Brand and his fist fight with Cyclops.

Ruth hears a voice in David’s mind, the voice that forces her to speak in dialogue that isn’t readable at all.  She thinks she is dying and goes toward the voice.  We get an awesome splash page of Xavier, from the afterlife, beautifully drawn and colored.  Xavier says something that every son wants to hear and every father needs to say more often, I’m proud of you son.  Since reading this comic, I’ve said it to my two month old every day and plan on doing so.  I swear, it almost brought a tear to my eye.  This moment here is going to cement this comic as my favorite and I can’t imagine what will knock it out of consideration but I will have to update my list.

This brings out the Weaver to David.  Weaver states that Xavier is proud of him and David states that his father is proud of him.  Weaver implies that it is David who is the split personality and not the Weaver.  With this, they are merged and finally, David is whole.  Now that they are merged, David can touch all of reality and time.

This is where I get confused over what happens and what doesn’t.  He has all of this power and needs to figure out what happens next.  he states it is no effort to restore the dead, so we see Abigail Brand waking up, Chamber’s power coming back and that young lady holding her head.

He asks where he should stop.  Should he bring his mother back from the dead?  Should he bring Ruth’s brother back to life?  I take it that he doesn’t restore those individuals.

We see Magik, and how David helped her kill the Elder Gods, which resulted in Illyana being put in the X-Brig on Utopia but still on Cyclops’ Extinction Team.

David is tempted to burn all of reality away and start anew.  He recognizes that he is not a god but he’s not arrogant.  He’s not a judge nor an acolyte.  He has come to a decision.

He realizes what it means to be a grown up.  It isn’t about accepting responsibility but when to step off.  He is going to rewrite history so that he was never born and let history sort itself out.  Ruth shouts for him to stop.  David states this great line, stories are stronger than time and space.  Lives still matter whether they happened or not.

It looks like David turns to camera and tells us that this isn’t an unhappy ending, this what has to happen.  It isn’t a defeat.  That’s old thinking.  He doesn’t want to live in a universe where he can’t rule himself.  With that, he is out of the timestream.

So if he is never born does that mean the Elder Gods are not dead and Illyana spent all of that time in the brig for no reason?  Does that mean Age of Apocalypse never happened?

Pixie enters Ruth’s room and tells her she needs to come out.  We enter the scene at the time when Xavier had just died.  Pixie doesn’t know who this David that Ruth keeps talking about.  Ruth starts repeating, no, over and over.  This freaks out Pixie and she leaves her alone.

We enter Ruth’s mindscape and we see that there is a piece of David that still exists in her mind.  Which is going to be weird for anyone in the room with her but she will probably learn to not respond to him aloud.

Issue ends with Ruth stating that she rules her, which is awesome.  We get Haut’s version of Oya, Quentin Quire, Genesis and Kid Gladiator and I like his style on these characters.

The final message is – The things that stay with you forever are the things that come to an end.

Issue ends with a letter from Simon Spurrier, which is very nice.  Also, Mr. Spurrier, I just want to say thank you for a perfect 24 issues.  I know I didn’t read nor buy every issue but the ones that I did, I enjoyed the most every week they came out.  I know there was no chance for this title to be considered a core title but when the core titles were off on crossovers or directions that were not amazing, this title was always on point and amazing.