After what I like to refer to as the “Age of Iceman’ that ended in issue #65 I was starting to feel sorry that we were going to see the end of the ‘Astonishing X-Men’. Of course that was until the story line that started taking place last issue and through this one.

Now I wish that the series was over. The doors are about to be closing on this book and being this close I really feel I have to stick it through. It was, for the most part, an enjoyable run until this space filler plot that really stretched my interest on the book.

You’d think with part of the star of this issue being Wolverine and Gambit in a stolen Lamborghini with a tentacle alien hiding out in the trunk would be a recipe for an amazing issue. You would think it was clearly destined to be an entertaining end cap to this short before finalizing the series.

Like me, you would have thought wrong.

You pretty much get a fan girl of the X-Men who sees the two walk in and have lunch. She has no self esteem and uses all of her courage to follow after them as they make their way out the front door.

She follows and works up the nerve to talk to them when a giant alien comes and grabs them all.

Yes, that just happened.

The alien reads their minds to learn their intentions . In one of the moments, it reads her mind (and everyone can see it) which is full of pro-X-Men fantasies.

The alien creature learned no one meant to harm its child and ends with letting them go. The young alien child learns a valuable lesson about growing up and the young woman who tagged along learned it as well. We close the book with her receiving a letter from Wolverine telling her that “Once an X-Men, always an X-Men. You’re not alone Kid.”

So after the almost cool zombie-like takeover from this alien kid last issue we really got a whole lot of nothing in this one. That’s really what happened in this issue – before the series is about to end and after we got the whole telling of the ‘Age of Iceman’ (which doesn’t seem to have any impact on how Bobby acts or is treated in the rest of the X-Books, which can only presumably take place after this.)

If she’s a character that somehow got used down the line to save a mutant or a group of them that’d be a great follow through. It’s one we’ll probably never see, though, as the big events that should be canon surround Iceman seem to be being ignored elsewhere.

Oh well. The clock’s ticking. Hopefully this series can end on a high note. It’ll be difficult to give it a good emotional end cap with all of the other currently running X-Titles out there. If Marjorie Liu can’t pull it off, I hope Marvel gives her a non-X title in the future. (A Peter Parker as Spider-Man would be great.)

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‘ASTONISHING X-Men’ #67
Writer: Marjorie Liu