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Publisher: Marvel
Writer(s): Zeb Wells, Mike Carey, Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, & Matt Fraction
Artist(s): Ibraim Roberson, Esad Ribic, Greg Land, & Terry Dodson
Cover: Adi Granov

**Spoilers**

“Second Coming ch 14”: It’s the end of Second Coming, and from the looks of this issue, the beginning of several new agendas for the X-Men.  This final installment is broken up into four chapters, with a different creative team assigned to each one.

With Bastion’s defeat and the very recent death of Cable, things are slowed down a bit as the team is attempting to rebuild both emotionally and physically.  As the medical team is doing its best to fix or just maintain the wounded, Hope has a very interesting conversation with Magneto while they recuperate.  After a dream sequence/flash back with Hope and Cable, we end up at the funeral of the son of Scott Summers and Hope’s surrogate father: Cable.  With Scott unable to find the words, Hope steps up and gives the eulogy for him, and then afterwards Scott sidelines Rogue from the combat roster for allowing Hope to actually fight for her life in the last chapter.  The rest of the book focuses on brief yet pertinent info, which sets up the new X-Force and X-23 titles along with the Five Lights story line.  Apparently, while Emma was watching Hope as she stood by the fire, the flames took the shape of the all too familiar Phoenix, so she runs to tell Scott.  However, he is distracted because Cerebra is doing something it hasn’t done in quite a long time: detected an active mutant, and not just one, but five of them scattered across various regions of the planet.

With this issue being spread out between the different creative teams, the story did seem to have that abrupt shift in terms of art that kind of throws things off a bit.  The first and third chapters are the strongest in terms of story after reading the issue a few times.  Maybe I’m more partial to the first chapter because I’ve always liked Magneto and he’s a character that will have you constantly questioning what his motives are.  Now, the third chapter is one of the better ones due to it dealing with Storm and Wolverine, and how they are both coping with Kurt’s death and the revelations of X-Force.  She is probably the closest thing Logan has to a sister, and their talk made for one of the greater character moments.  There was also a part where Scott and Logan discussed if the Avengers would come for them if they found out what X-Force had done, which would actually make for a pretty good story arc.  Let’s hope that conversation is capitalized on.  We also find out that Hope is basically an improved version of the former X-Man Mimic, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Cable’s funeral was pretty much perfect, and Mike Carey should pat himself on the back for this.  That eulogy was everything Cable was, and having Hope deliver it was a great way to deliver the scene.  Unfortunately, towards the end of that chapter the rest seemed forced and out of place, as Cyclops decided to sideline Rogue immediately afterwards.

There were some minor issues again with the visual continuity of the story, and since all of these guys were working on the exact same book, it was just a bit frustrating.  In the first chapter, Nemesis states that Archangel’s wings aren’t healing while he is in that form, but when it’s time for the cool (yes it was cool!) two-page spread of the new X-Force, Greg Land shows Archangel with healed wings.  There were several other things as well, and it’s something that’s gone on throughout the entire Second Coming run; I probably should have expected it to show up in this issue as well.

All in all, Second Coming #2 brought everything to a close and sets us up for several of the new story lines coming out of the other X-Books pretty well.  I just hope that this event gives the franchise the shot in the arm that it needs to stay interesting and just fun to read again.

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