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Review: X-Men: Dark Reign: The List: by Matt Fraction and Alan Davis: Colon: Colon: Colon
Alan Davis is a legend in comics for a reason. His work is epic, clean, bold, full of great storytelling and enough pizzazz and showmanship to dazzle and excite without obscuring. And so when he draws an ex-humanoid-turned sea monster devouring Atlanteans and fighting X-Men off the coast alongside Namor in a bid by Norman Osborn to destroy those who oppose him, you go along with it.
Davis' style has been criticised for being over-clean, though works like Wolverine: Bloodsport would contradict any sense that it's innate. It's a clear stylistic choice of Alan's, and promoted a lighter, brighter side to superheroics that is often lost in the digital airbrushes of other Marvel comics. Here however, taking place below and above the oceanline, it's entirely appropriate from whatever perspective you take, water cleansing, immersing and coating everything in sight.
Fraction uses this book to continue his interpretation of the current X-Men reinterpreted as an analogue of Israel, a new nation under attack, and fighting back hard, fast and with a brain. Cyclops reinvented as a superstrategist, Frost as his right hand woman, and a team of loyal troops. Utopia. It won't last, will it?
He also nails the Namor dark sense of humour, as Namor finds himself fighting his de-evolved wife (who he thought he'd already killed) and goes slightly Dave Sim on us, regarding the idea of how to deal with "the ex".
The comic also features a run through of Wolverine's history with a reprint of an older Fraction story with Sam Kieth, that's very Garth Ennis-reminiscent. There are men in bars being men to other men , backing up men, and doing what men do. X-Men: Dark Reign: The List feels a little more Fractionesque.
X-Men: Dark Reign: The List is published this week from Marvel Comics.
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