Beware The Self Righteous One: Reviewing ‘Immortal X-Men’ #15

At the dawn of the Hellfire Gala, mutants lost everything. They lost Krakoa, many lives, and they even each other. With things at their most dire, have the displaced mutants found some semblance of hope or is it just another trick?

Let’s be real, the easy money is on some sort of trick. Always look a gift horse in the mouth if it’s being led by a Sinister.

In the meantime, thanks Mother Righteous. Surely those words won’t come back to haunt the mutants or myself.

Immortal X-Men continues to make a shift that bridges various plotlines quite easily. While Selene is sort of our point-of-view character, following the old format, she’s also not. Rather than being the actual focus of the issue, she instead helps shape some of the plot and gives a brief glimpse of her true desires. One thing that works here is how the book is juggling dual plots, and — through these two issues — give each their due without leaving the other out.

In the previous issue, we got far more with Xavier and his time on Krakoa and how Shaw/Selene/Orchis tied into that. While Exodus, Hope, and Destiny led wayward mutants in a briefer glimpse. Here, we see that flipped where Xavier becomes the B-plot essentially so that we see more of the lost mutants.

I’m intrigued by a lot of what Kieron Gillen is doing here. Balancing so much and giving it all weight. Last review, I mentioned my conflicted feelings about the heavy religious stuff from Exodus. This issue it bothered me less because it’s clear that Exodus, Hope, and Destiny are sort of reverting back to their default, pre-Krakoa states in some ways. Without Krakoa, they are clinging to what they know, trying to survive and make sense of their new situation.

Paco Medina steps into the artist role for this issue alongside regular colorist David Curiel and letterer Clayton Cowles.

Medina’s artwork is like regular artist Lucas Werneck in some respects. Both have deep details, a heaviness but also a whimsical sort of feeling to them and capture the emotions perfectly. Medina’s leans a bit more towards that whimsical/superhero world than Werneck’s has at times. Together with Curiel’s colors, there is a bit more vividness to the whole affair rather than the heavier darkness felt in the previous issue.

It works because that issue revolved around the depressed Xavier, while this one is more about glimpses of hope for the lost. It makes sense things are lighter and brighter. The team makes it work and make us feel like maybe there is that light at the end of the tunnel, despite knowing that Righteous is bad news.

I know some people debate the use of it at times, but I’m definitely a fan of sentence case in comics. It’s just such a smoother way to set a normal volume/tone for the issue. Giving us a baseline to then compare the bigger louder or smaller softer things to as we move through the story. Cowles makes it all work so well and flows through the issue, capturing all the emotions and personalities in every word. There are tons of words needed here as there is a lot going on and Cowles makes sure it never takes over too much of one space at a time.

Immortal X-Men #15 is now available from Marvel Comics.