I just picked up a copy yesterday, and I really liked it.
Kordey's art is still rather ugly, yes, but his layouts were much improved. I don't know if there were any moments where i had no idea what a picture was of until i studied it for a while (unlike a lot of the Imperial storyline, like that picture of Scott and Xorn hanging upside down on the first page of one of the issues).
I think that if someone else was inking Kordey's pencils, the art might just be up to NewXMen standard. Look at the amount of detail in VanSciver and Townsend's cover (which i really like, even though it took me two whole minutes to find it on the shelves of my local comic store. the logo just didn't leap out at me, i guess), and then compare it to Kordey's crude etchings. The actual layouts, as others have said, are a lot better. Did anyone else notice that the action scenes seem to be really reminiscent of the action scenes in Kingdom Come?
I think that the sequence with Scott and Emma implies that they didn't sleep together in Hong Kong. Personally, i think that Grant is doing a bit of a bait and switch here. It looks like he's setting up the downfall of Scott and Jean's marriage, but what i think he's doing is raking them over the coals before their love overcomes all obstacles in it's path, or whatever. NewXMen seems to have a very optimistic tone to it, and I'm inclined to think that Scott and Jean saving their marriage would be much more in keeping with that.
Something that may or may not be significant is that, to me, the dead figures in Jean's wasteland vision seem to be Hank, Logan, Emma and Xorn, but not Scott (or Charles, for that matter). Of course, given the level of detail in the artwork it could be the fucking muppets. |
