Managing the power-level of a superhero, or in this case a superhero team, is a tricky thing. I think there's a reason I've always gravitated more towards Marvel's 'street-level' heroes like Daredevil, whose superpower can be a hinderance as much as a help and who is, at the end of the day, just a regular man. Daredevil can be beaten. In fact, he regularly is. I can't really say the same for the X-Men though, especially in this collection.
Continuing on from the previous volume, Gerry Duggan's X-Men are dealing with a few antagonists at once, and while the first volume offered us a nice amount of set-up and escalation of these threats, this is where they come to a head.
Reporter Ben Urich's plotline is the most deftly handled. After discovering that mutants have 'solved for death' (if you've been following along with the X-Men, you know they can be reborn after death now), Ben gives Cyclops a day to offer comment on the story, but before he can respond, someone--a mutant, most likely--erased Ben's memory of ever discovering the story. How this plot develops is smart and surprising, but unfortunately it's given the least amount of pages of all the conflicts in this volume.
The rest of the volume is pretty evenly split between Doctor Stasis looking to expose the mutants, and the X-Men tracking down Gameworld to put an end to their attacks on Earth. This is where I ran into issues with the X-Men's power level. By combining their powers, their assault on Gameworld goes...well, perfectly. The only moment of tension, it turns out, was a fabrication. It's fun watching the X-Men do their thing in the specific way they're required to for this mission, but when their plan goes off without a hitch I couldn't help but wish for more conflict, more consequences.
While most of the team is assaulting Gameworld, Cyclops and Synch track down Doctor Stasis. Narratively, I have no clue why they didn't just wait for the rest of the team to return. I can see the author's hand a little too much--he wanted a one-on-one showdown between Cyclops and Stasis because if the rest of the X-Men were present, there is no way Stasis would be able to get the upper hand the way he did. I can't really blame him, though. Coming up with ways to put mutants on the back foot these days is a borderline impossible task.
I do enjoy Duggan's run, though. He loves these characters, and there's huge fun to be had in the fight scenes, dialogue, and small character beats. It's always more fun to watch a character fail than succeed, though, and I wish I'd seen a bit more of that. I love these characters too, and seeing them deal with failure--even simple temporary set backs--would really have fleshed them out.
***
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