"Blinded by the Light, Epilogue"
by Mike Carey and Mike Choi

Synopsis & Review by Specter313:
Synopsis: Beast is going over all of Cannonball’s injuries, physical and mental, when Bobby cuts in with his grief over feeling that it’s all his fault. He says they should have pulled out instead of fighting, but Beast correctly points out that if they had, then Sinister would have the diaries, and while it may seem bad with Sam’s injuries, they still did what needed to be done and got out alive. Hank then excuses himself to check on his other pantient, Blindfold. When asked how she’s doing, she gives another cryptic answer about things getting better before getting worse, but says she appreciates the company. But she isn’t talking about Sam. She’s talking about Julian, Megan, Mr. Wagner, and someone else getting hurt.

Cyclops is thinking about a time when Cable was still alive when Emma calls him out on thinking of this yet again. She wonders why it’s this particular moment. He says it’s because it was Cable saying they gave him a family, and that’s why he’s dead, because they gave too many people second chances.

Cut to the Marauder base, where Mystique is chastising Sinister for not making much progress with Rogue. His patience is wearing thin between her and Gambit sticking up for the unconscious X-Man, and he says that he could just as easily have scanned Raven’s mind for the diaries, but she says that’s out of the question. She leaves in a huff, saying to keep Gambit by Rogue’s side so as to have a familiar face around should she wake.

The X-Men are pooling their knowledge. They know that Sinister killed time travelers and precogs to keep them blind, and Logan suggests taking the fight to them before anything happens, while Emma suggests trying to fill out their blanks in knowledge. Bishop has been contacted to help out and Scott is going to assemble a team to go after Sinister. Everyone leaves except Bobby, who figures that Scott is going to shut down their team. He says it’s not because of the choices Rogue made for team members, especially since Scott led to vote to keep Mystique around, but because of Cable’s death, since they still got the jobs done. After some sarcasm, Scott says no one is going anywhere, they need all the help they can get, and the only ones he blames for Nate’s death is the Marauders, who will know what that means soon enough.

Gambit is looking over Rogue, and he decides this is his best chance to apologize to her for everything wrong he did recently. Somehow, his words get through, and memories of their time together manage to come out among the jumble of her mind, forcing her awake, if only for a brief moment to recognize him, before passing out once again. Mystique shows up and suggests he just touch her skin so he’s always a part of her, which he’s not too happy to listen to. They talk, and she admits to still caring for Rogue, which confuses him, since she’s tried killing Rogue on several occasions. She doesn’t ask him to understand, just to be prepared for everything they still have to go through and wait for the pieces to fall into place.

On a balcony high above them, Exodus is telling Sinister that he is getting impatient with waiting. This angers Sinister, and he basically tells Exodus to sit and wait until everything, including the Destiny Diaries and prophecies from those who could know the future, tells them to act.

Sam is finally awake and Bobby is visiting him, apologizing and saying that he feels like this is his fault because he let Mystique in. Sam says this isn’t his fault, he just got rolled by an expert, and it even happened to him before with Serafina, and you just have to live around it. Suddenly, Blindfold seems to go into convulsions, and a power surge goes through the building. The guys think it was nothing but Blindfold, with a bloody nose, says they’re wrong. It’s not nothing; it’s everything.

Review: Well, this issue didn’t accomplish a ton of stuff, but being an epilogue, it didn’t really have to, but it does help the story to flow right into Messiah Complex with it ending with the power surge that came from the baby’s birth. Even though not a lot happened, it did show some interesting things. First, it showed that the X-Men are not sitting back and just letting things come to them. They’re sitting down and actively planning things out like a well oiled team should, and that’s very nice to see, as they’re all pretty much veterans by now, and should be able to do this. Second, is that not everything is all hunky dory over on the villains side. Both Mystique and Exodus seem to be growing tired from the lack of answers coming from Sinister, and if he’s not careful, that’s bound to bite him in the butt, especially if the hints of something going on between Raven and Gambit pan out.

But the real star of this issue is the art. Wow, it’s just breathtaking. Choi does some amazingly detailed and lifelike figures that really jump off the page and give each character a unique look. I know Choi has been criticized in the past of having his older characters look way too young, but that’s not really a problem this time, as it is that he seems to make some of the characters too pretty. I’m sure characters like Sinister and Exodus aren’t really supposed to look like they walked off a model shoot, ya know?

ENDANGERED SPECIES CHAPTERS 15 & 16
By Mike Carey & Scot Eaton

Synopsis: Beast is sitting at a table with Wanda herself with an hourglass, telling him to just let the end come soon. He doesn’t think he wants to and begs her to help end the pain she caused. She claims she ended all the pain, but he says she may have gotten rid of her own pain, but caused more for so many others. She says the sand is still falling, and he should get clear, but he can’t without her help and he is soon enveloped in it all.

Beast wakes from his bad dream to find Nightcrawler having tracked him down, with everyone being worried. He says he’s still out of town, and gives Kurt a quick rundown of what he’s been through recently, and says he has one last stop to make and he’ll call it a day. This stop seems to be a European village, where he buys a pocket watch and goes to an open air diner. He is joined by a familiar looking woman named Wanda who tells him the watch isn’t real and breaks easily. He’s startled at first, but invites her to sit with him, as a waitress brings over drinks for them, which makes Wanda wonder how he knew to order for her. He says he had a feeling, but she says she doesn’t believe in magic, which he also agrees to, but this turns her to asking if he believes we get what we wish for, and has a reason for asking him. She drops the watch to the ground, and tells him a story of a man who catches a mermaid, who gives him her magic comb for her freedom. However, whenever it’s wished upon, it only makes his life worse until he gives the comb back to her, wanting no more of it. Wanda told him this story to show you can get what you wish for and still be worse off, since she noticed he had the look of a man searching for some kind of omen. She finishes the tea and gets up to leave, but he exclaims it can’t end like this. He starts to go on about the Wanda he knew, but backtracks so she doesn’t get suspicious, and she says her life her suits her, wishes him luck, and leaves as he picks up the broken watch.

Hank leaves and returns to the abandoned Weapon X facility, and as he records his final notes, he begins to bury all the dead in their own separate graves and markers, saying that’s all he can really do for the dead. That, and live.

Synopsis: Well, that was anticlimactic. For all that this little back up story seemed to be doing, it seemed like it was building up to some kind of answer to the M-Day problem, but all Beast seemed to really find was where Wanda has been this whole time, but since she has no memory of her former life, that was pointless as well. Hmm, maybe whenever there’s an event where they finally hunt down Wanda, it will come in handy, but for now, this mini-event just didn’t seem all that necessary. It started off rather interesting and strong, and helped give us some nice updates on interesting characters like Dark Beast and the Guthries, but ultimately fizzled out at the end.

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