Saturday, June 13, 2009

Ultimate X-Men #13- Magnetic North by Brian K Vaughan, Stuart Immonsen and Wade vonGrawbadger

Magneto is imprisoned for crimes against humanity in a prison called the Triskelion. But when Lorna Dane, a mutant with magnetic powers, accidentally kills several humans in attempting to put out a fire, she is thrown into prison with him, as his cell is the only place that can hold her.

The students at Emma Frost's Academy of Tomorrow, including Lorna's boyfriend and brother of Scott Summers, Havok, who is in reality Alex Summers, won't let Lorna be locked up in a place like the Triskelion and decide to break her out, including several new mutants, such as Roberto DaCosta and Sam Guthrie. Meanwhile, Emma calls Charles Xavier, realizing what will happen with Alex and the others, and Professor X sends his own team to ambush Alex Summers and the others, holding back Scott, Marvel Girl, Kitty Pride and Iceman as backup should Havok and his friends manage to defeat the others.

Meanwhile, in the Savage Land, the Scarlet Witch has tracked down Longshot and taken him prisoner. He is also being held at Triskelion. But as Doug Ramsay, Emma Frost's computer genius, searches for anything that could prove that Lorna Dane is innocent, Magneto is attempting to befriend Polaris and get her on his side. He claims that he kills humans not out of hatred, but love- not that she believes him.

And outside, Magneto's lover, Mystique, along with Forge, picks up the magnetic generator from beneath the street, the one that made it seem that the deaths were Lorna Dane's fault. They also head to the Triskelion, even as Doug Ramsey uncovers the footage of them planting the machine.

Back at the prison, Magneto uses the confluence of all these separate plots to break free from his prison and try to escape, and it's going to take all of the heroes, plus Nick Fury and his men, and the Ultimates, to re-imprison the captives once Magneto uses them and their escape to add to the chaos of his breakout. But when he threatens Lorna with death to escape the Triskelion, it's up to the Summers brothers to take him down with the little fillip that their powers don't work on each other at all.

But Magneto's plans are full of plots upon plots. Can they ever be sure that they have really recaptured Magneto? Or did he manage to give all the heroes and Fury the slip after all? And what plans does he have for the future?

Magneto is a smart guy, but he's rarely allowed to show just how smart he really is. In this graphic novel, we get to see exactly how well he plans things and why his plots usually succeed. He manages to manipulate this entire scenario, all without being able to contact anyone, and manages to get an innocent woman thrown in the Triskelion with him.

And then he sets up a conflict between Fury, Shield, the Ultimates, the X-Men, and the Students from Emma Frost's school so that he can engineer a jailbreak for himself and one other from the Triskelion- all without any of the other groups involved suspecting that it's all his plan to begin with. But this begs the question- if Magneto has always been this good, why is it that he was in the Triskelion in the first place? How did he get captured if he's so good at using people to achieve his own ends?

This was an interesting graphic novel and story arc, but it wasn't really well thought through. The implication was that Magneto is always this good, but if he was, why get imprisoned in the first place? It was nice to see characters from the old X-Men series, especially the New Mutants, being incorporated into the Ultimates storyline, but there were enough story problems that I can't really completely recommend it. Read, but don't buy.

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