Interesting, but not amazing. I didn't really get all the song references in the little blurbs about each character. Norman seemed a little too in control of himself at the end. Mystique seemed too nice much of the time. I am super curious about the fate of X-man. ( )

After the events of Utopia: Avengers/X-Men, the "Dark X-Men"-- Norman Osborn's government-sponsored team of mutants for dealing with mutant problems-- are down to just five members, Emma Frost, Namor, Cloak, Dagger, and Dark Wolverine all having gone elsewhere.  This leaves the team with Mystique as its field leader and Mimic (who borrows other mutants' powers), Weapon Omega (who killed Alpha Flight, the bastard), and Dark Beast (a sadistic version of Beast from an apocalyptic timeline) as its only members. Mystique impersonates the dead(?) Jean Grey in the field, just because she can.

In Utopia, one was left with an impression of the Dark X-Men as a group of very, very dangerous people with malevolent intent. In turning them into viewpoint characters, Cornell ends up undermining them: the book feels more like Confused X-Men. Mystique just wants to be free of Osborn, Omega doesn't mean to do anything he does, and Mimic is similarly well-intentioned. Only Dark Beast is as malevolent as his name implies, cruelly tortuting in the name of science. This would all be okay, as obviously this group needs to be more deeply characterized than being simply EVIL, but they're not deeply characterized; each character has one single-minded objective that they follow.

We're told they're conflicted, but only with Mystique does this conflict come across as anything more than confusion.  Indeed, Mystique was my favorite part of the book. Sure, she's selfish and partly she just wants to escape Osborn, but she's motivated by a loyalty to mutantkind and she seems to actually want to do the right thing sometimes. I've never read a story with her character before, but I'd like to read more.

This being Cornell, the dialogue is pretty good, and there's a number of great concepts running around here, more than a book this size would lead you to expect. And Leonard Kirk's art is great, clean but angular, perhaps not what you'd expect for a "dark" comic, but it's so good, that I have no complaints. His Mystique looks pretty good in that jumpsuit!

A number of reviews that I read of this book indicated that its subtitle, "Journey to the Center of the Goblin," was a dead giveaway as to where the story was going. It sure says something about the oddity of my dabblings in Marvel Comics that I spent the whole book waiting for Alpha Flight's Goblyn to show up. (She didn't.)

I'm not a huge X-nut, but once I read a spoiler that Nate Grey was coming back in this title, I just had to buy it. I love Nate Grey (and Cable...sigh...I'm sad that he's gone again once his role as "super-nanny" was over), and this book was worth reading about how he manages to come back to earth.

The book is actually quite good. I didn't care for the little Matt Fraction-esque captions, but Cornell wrote the book well otherwise. There were some funny scenes, balanced out by some disturbing ones. The art was okay, but nothing spectacular.

Note for any other Nate Grey fans: Although Dark X-Men was just a limited series and is now over, Nate remains and makes an appearance in New Mutants. I'm definitely going to be checking that title out for more X-Man. ( )

Cornell can of course be relied on to be humourous, engaging & exciting, and this is all 3. There's some really dark but laugh out loud humour at play here, and any Marvel book that features Omega singing Goon show songs is a fine book indeed. But the ending of this arc is majorly ruined by it's subtitle "Journey to the Centre of the Goblin", and the ultimate pay off has one too many double bluffs. ( )

Dark X-Men isn't necessarily a bad story, just not all that engaging. We learn that Norman Osborn may be a little more crazy than he's been letting on. Mystique REALLY wants to be free of his influence. Dark Beast is creepy, no question now, but all in the name of science! And Nate Grey is back, he's pissed, but maybe he is a little overconfident these days. Again, this is one of those volumes that may not seem so important now, but may be laying some necessary groundwork for later. ( )