It's amazing how much stuff Warren Ellis can put into one book. Astonishing is the right name for this book . . honestly. Here's what we got . . last issue the X-Men went to Chaparanga Beach. It's a place where dead space-ships are taken. There, they found a mutant . . . actually a triploid. He was trying to activate a box with the power from the ship. When the X-Men showed up, he killed himself rather than give up any information. I guess they found another mutant there also. Now a triploid can't exist naturally, and the other mutant had the x-gene on the wrong chromosome. Anyways they take the box back to San Francisco but Hank is just as stymied. So, Agent Brand from SWORD is called in. She immediately identifies the box as a Shadow Box. Apparently it some sort of technology that used to travel between dimensions . . parallel Earths. They also find a journal. It appears that the triploid and the unknown mutant were on opposite sides of some conflict . . a secret war. They also find reference to a place in China . . Tian. It's a five mile stretch in the Chinese forests that's completely unidentifiable. It's blocked from all forms of scanning equipment and has been for years. So, of course, the X-Men need to go and check it out. So, all of the stuff that's happened in the book so far . . is nothing compared to what they find in the forest. Tian mean 'heaven'. And the area they find . . a floating city . . looks just like it. First they find out that the whole city has spintronic activity. "These floors, these walls, they're slabs of spintronic computing material. Spintronics use the spin of electrons to store information. They open the way for quantum-based calculation. This entire building is a spintronic supercomputer. All of it." They find some dead mutants, but because of the energy in the room . . something generates preservative properties. So they determine that this location is the home of the Chinese X-Men. That is . . . until M-Day. Hank surmises that when Wanda whispered "No more mutants." that she turned them all off. I don't know how Warren can think up all of this stuff. The guys amazing. Plus, he does a fantastic job with the story . . as far as character development, interaction and dialogue. The guys a genius. Add to that the amazing pencils of Simone Bianchi . . and I think, we have one of the best X-Men story-arcs ever. Simone has drawn some amazing pages here. And I love the ways the panels flow. I didn't think anything was going to beat the first 24 issues of this book. But . . this chapter just may do it. There is some amazing work here. Props to all involved.
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