The final fight for mutantkind has begun! Find out if the X-Men can finally stop Orchis and live in peace in Fall of the House of X #2 by Marvel Comics!
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #2
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colorist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Jordan White
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: February 14th, 2024
Previously in Fall of X: On the brink of eradication, the X-Men will fight to the very last moment. Orchis has managed to frame mutantkind for a massacre, lace Krakoan drugs with a kill switch, and use Stark technology to create Stark Sentinels. On top of that, Orchis tried Cyclops and found him and all of mutantkind guilty, allowing them to deploy Stark Sentinels to carry out Orchis’ decree.
Fall of the House of X #2 starts with Polaris leading the head of a dead celestial and a swarm of Brood onto the Bloom, Orchis’ space station. She then starts to kill the Orchis soldiers but gives them a chance for the noncombatants to escape. Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler also arrive to rescue Firestar on the Bloom space station, but Doctor Stasis escapes with the secret to Firestar’s location. Elsewhere, Juggernaut tries to save the physical manifestation of Krakoa from Nimrod, and Shadowkat heads to save Cyclops from execution. Gambit and Rogue are sent to help Juggernaut, but they change their plans to bring Manifold back from under stasis. Manifold is initially angry, but Latcura shows up, and suddenly, Manifold understands and teleports them out before Sentinels arrive. Meanwhile, Omega Sentinel is about to kill Cyclops, but he is rescued by Dr. Gregor, who reveals there is a Sentinel City!
There is so much action within Fall of the House of X #2. We are trying to wrap up all these loose threads that we have just moved from story beat to story beat without giving the characters a chance to react. This is a narrative choice but not one that I particularly enjoy. I want to see the characters respond to the situation a little more and watch them try to manage the danger that they are in. But I think what irked me was the introduction of Sentinel City, which I’ve only read about in passing in early 2000 comics. Why introduce a new plot point that must be addressed when there are so many pieces to the war already? We could have taken that two-page reveal and given more characterization to one of the plot points, like addressing Synch’s appearance again after the loss of Talon or more conversation between Gambit, Rogue, and Manifold.
The art also felt a little chaotic, and my senses were overwhelmed going from page to page. There have been a few inconsistencies in the storytelling and art style, and I desperately want this to slow down so we can better understand what is going on. But with only a few issues in this series, it probably is difficult for the creative team to include what they must.
This is a weaker issue of the Fall of X event. The event made a lot of narrative promises that the creative team now must answer, but hopefully, the finale will be worth the chaos of these middle issues. Fall of the House of X #2 gets 3 out of 5 stars.
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Fall of the House of X #2
Fall of the House of X #2 applies too many plot points for the reader to keep up with and lacks the characters' reactions to situations to create more nuance in the conflict.
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Writing6
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Art6
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Coloring6
Christopher Rondeau is a storyteller based in Tulsa, OK. Finding himself with little work, he ended up creating a job as a Game Master full time on the internet. Chris spends most of his days reading everything he can, writing bad fiction, and watching old Digimon cartoons with his daughter. Sometimes you can find him Dungeon Mastering a podcast or streaming on twitch. Recently, he has completed his Master's degree with a focus on collaborative storytelling. Find out more at https://rondeaucreator.com
1 Comment
Duggan’s work on this event has been, more or less, garbage. Like “X-Men Green”, the story suffers from the characters becoming paper-thin caricatures of themselves and/or remorseless killing machines – there’s no nuance or pathos, just murder murder murder like they’re weeding the garden – and elsewhere it largely devolves into the characters explaining the plot to one another…
…to the extent that it almost goes unnoticed when something utterly goofy happens, like the Omega Sentinel dragging Cyclops in front of the Eiffel Tower (?) for a street beheading (??), with apparently no witnesses or intervention from anyone (???).
Followed by this ultra-powerful being with centuries’ worth of future knowledge getting frozen in her tracks by a “small EMP”.
Just…sheer incompetence. I have no idea why they put him on flagship books.