Review: ‘Fall Of The House Of X’ #2 Is Equal Parts Good & Bad

Mutantkind continues to take the war to Orchis. In Fall of the House of X #2, that war gets brutal in an unexpected way.

Gerry Duggan, Lucas Werneck, Bryan Valenza and Travis Lanham make big moves against Orchis.

The plan is set. The X-Men art place. Orchis is about to feel the wrath of all of mutantkind. Starting with the mistress of magnetism and her legion of the Brood…

There’s almost two different issues here. The majority of the issue is Polaris and Broo’s invasion of the Bloom — Orchis’ orbital space station. Duggan writes the hell out of this entire sequence, and Werneck’s art is at its best. It’s a little bit unexpected how violent it gets — the Brood don’t just eat Orchis, but Knowhere eats the Bloom too — but it’s a major moment of catharsis. 

Unfortunately that strong start doesn’t hold up. Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus’s invasion of the Bloom is heavily out of character for the latter two. Kurt and Piotr callously and cruelly murdering Orchis agents just doesn’t work. Cyclops’ rescue is the same- it relies on a face turn from a character that’s barely been in any X-book for literal years. If the turn had been built up a little more, if it had even another issue of character work, it may have landed better. Even worse, outside of the Brood invasion of the Bloom, this just feels like a series of barely connected moments, not a story.

Werneck still does good work for most of the issue, but it’s not as strong as the opening. I’ve always liked his eye for layouts, and he does some incredible design work. The figure work in the Cyclops sequence falls a little short, almost feeling like it was tacked on and rushed. The colors are good throughout those, with Valenza doing work that recalls House of X color artist Marte Gracia, without feeling like an imitation.

Fall of the House of X #2 is available now from Marvel Comics.