X-Men: Manifest Destiny #4 - Marvel

Surprisingly, I like this book. I mean . . I'm not surprised that I like the characters, but . . with all of the X-Men books out there, and now all of these mini-series coming out . . there's a serious proliferation of the market going on right now. You'd think that the stories would just get repetitive, or tedious. But with the X-Men, they do a good job of keeping things interesting. Even with the overabundance. I still think this book reminds me of Marvel Comics Presents. I think it's the format with the 3 short stories. To me, the best story continues to be the Bobby Drake/Mystique story-line in the front of the book. I'm not sure what Mystique's motivations or goals are for pushing Bobby this hard, but . . she really seems to be testing the limits of his capabilities. Tough love . . if you will. Mike Carey and Michael Ryan are doing a fantastic job with this part of the book. Our second story about Mercury, by CB Cebulski and Andre Coelho was ok. It wasn't as action packed, but it was nice to see Cessily again. She's been out of the picture for a little while . . ever since they made that beast out of her skin. However, I think that with this story . . and her little therapy session with X-23 . . that we may be seeing more of her soon. And finally we get a glimpse at Kurt and how he's dealing with his loss. He's got a couple of problems actually. First he's trying to figure out hope to cope with Kitty, and secondly he's feeling that the 'new' X-Men are younger and stronger. "Pixie has already proven to be a stronger teleporter than myself. And with so few students, my services are hardly required . . .", so right now he's easily distracted . . and not much help in a fight. But I think he's selling himself short. He's going through danger-room scenarios and he's having a hard time keeping focused. But I think when the chips are down . . and someones life is actually on the line . . he's more than proven himself ready and able to step up to the plate and be part of the team. It was a nice little self-reflection story by James Asmus and Takeshi Miyazawa. Like I said, overall I enjoyed the book. I especially liked the Humberto Ramos cover. Fantastic!