Thoughts

Way back in Giant Size X-men, I remarked on the journey through dated stereotypes that forms part of the Professor assembling the team. At the time it seemed that Banshee had been spared. Xavier just meets him at a show in Nashville and in the space of two panels, he’s hired!

It really seemed like the title had dodged a bullet.

Oh dear.

These three issues where the X-men visit Banshee in Oirland, at his old ancestral castle (??) filled with leprechauns (!!!) really is just too many lazy stereotypes. I don’t want to be too mean about it – I realise that accuracy and social realism isn’t ever going to be a goal for a fun comic, that any trip is going to focus on what tells a fun and fantastical story. But Ireland has so many fantastic myths and legends – Selkies, the children of Lir, Fomorians, the Morrigan and the undying land of Tír na nÓg that part-inspired Tolkien. There is so much to play with that the fact we get Darby O’Nightcrawler and the Little People is a letdown.

Fun Panel

Oh well, may as well embrace the lunacy!

That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense

For three issues now the story has stressed that, in Juggernaut, these new X-men face a foe well beyond their talents. The level of peril seems high and how they might defeat him seems the purpose of the story.

Which makes his exit, diving after Black Tom because there’s only a few panels left in the issue and this needs to be done with impossible to take seriously.