Hellbound

While this series started off as a search and a rescue for Illyana Rasputin, this issue brings Cannonball, Pixie, and Gambit into the spotlight. The story sets up quickly, following the lengthy prose “Previously” page. Without much delay, lines are drawn in the flaming sand and foes are defined. No time wasted with decompression here. Yost’s story is briskly paced and filled with turmoil, trouble, and tension. N’astirh plays with the hatred Pixie has for Magik and offers to replace Pixie’s very soul, so long as she slays Magik. Gambit’s Death persona takes over and the beaten path gets left behind. There are enough demons flying around in this issue where no one should make it out alive, especially a half dozen lower tier X-Men wannabes. The varied X-costumes don’t offer much unity to this team as the six of them are buried in reds, maroons, purples, and all shades in between. Ramos’ colors add a chaos to this book that threatens to overwhelm the pencil art. Talibao’s pencils are di

Spinning out of the “Second Coming” crossover, “X-Men: Hellbound” has a difficult task ahead of itself. It needs to follow through on one of the plotlines within the story (Magik getting mystically attacked and dragged into Limbo) in a way that both makes sense for readers of “Second Coming” and stands alone as its own mini-series. The end result is a comic with two pages showing part of “Second Coming,” plus a lot of pages setting up the team of X-Men to head into Limbo after Magik. In the case of “a lot of pages,” it’s the first two-thirds of the issue that Chris Yost devotes to the preparing to enter Limbo. Yost assembles a particularly odd cast of characters, a strange combination of B- and C-list members of the X-Men who one suspects simply weren’t going to be used in the main crossover. They’re not a bad group, a combination of scouting and firepower, but if you were expecting either the main team of X-Men or alternately New Mutants, you’ll be a little disappointed. As for Magi