Posted in: Comics | Tagged: exiles, marvel, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-ual Healing: Everything is Resolved by Punching in Exiles #5

Published Sun, 15 Jul 2018 19:00:24 -0500

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in comics.

Each week, armed with the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of 30+ years of reading X-Men comics, we crankily read every new X-book that comes out, recap the events, provide some back-links to Marvel Unlimited, and wonder when Marvel will let Chris Claremont write something again. Seriously, how do you have the greatest writer in the history of comics on the payroll and just not use him for anything?

It's the way X-Men comics were meant to be read! It's the column that can only be known as…

For more about the column, check out the reboot issue here.

EXILES #5
SALADIN AHMED (W) • JAVIER RODRíGUEZ (A)
Cover by DAVID MARQUEZ
Character Variant Cover by MIKE McKONE
TIME TO DIE!
The identity of the Time-Eater has finally been revealed! And the Exiles have nowhere left to run. It's time for the Exiles to face down their enemy — no matter the cost. And in historic Exiles fashion, not everyone will survive. Don't miss the first arc's epic conclusion!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Conventional comic book wisdom tells us that a villain threatening the entire multiverse requires, at minimum, a 7-issue maxi-series with multiple #0 issue, a bunch of tie-ins, and probably an extra issue added onto the end once the comic is delayed by months. But Exiles aims to prove that it can be done in five issues or less.

The comic opens with a page of X-pository captions from The Unseen, which harkens back to the 80s when comic book publishers believed any comic could be someone's first. It's still true today, but no one cares anymore, except the Exiles. Speaking of whom, they're facing down with Kang, who is also the Time-Eater. Kang's plan is to become the multiverse itself by eating all of the realities and killing all living creatures. Has he tried the Keto diet instead? Li'l Wolvie tries to reason with him, to no avail.

Before Kang can kill the Exiles, 1970s Nick Fury arrives out of a portal and blasts him with a machine gun. Blink teleports them away to another part of Kang's fortress. There, Iron Lad has a crisis of conscience over the fact that Kang is a future version of himself, but Kamala Khan tells him that he can change the future. Iron Lad has a theory that if the Exiles just bring the Talus back to the moon where Blink first got it, they can reverse all the damage and restore all the universes that Kang ate, though it will mean that the Exiles can't go home to their universes and also the person carrying the Talus will die. Nick Fury volunteers.

Kang attacks again, so Iron Lad, Li'l Wolvie, and Valkyrie stay behind to stop him while Blink, Kamala, and Nick Fury head through a series of portals to return to The Unseen's house on the moon. On the way, they meet Sabretooth, the one from the original Exiles series. Kamala, however, thinks it's the Sabretooth from her universe who killed her family, so she tries to kill him, and she doesn't care when Blink and Sabretooth explain he's a different guy. They're attacked by unseen assailants.

Back at Kang's fortress, Kang is having trouble killing Li'l Wolvie because there's no concept of murder in Wolvie's reality (which is why he's the best Wolverine). Kang decides to imprison him until he can figure it out. Back in one of the portal worlds, an army of Kangs are attacking the Exiles. Kamala is shot, and she sacrifices herself so Blink and Nick Fury can escape. They make it to the moon, so that's presumably the end of Nick Fury, and Blink gets thrown into the multiverse itself, where she meets several other versions of herself.

At Kang's fortress, the other Exiles are nearly overrun. Even Wolvie pops his claws and starts fighting, calling Kang a bully. Then Blink arrives with the other blinks and all the friends the Exiles made in the pirate world they visited last issue. This overwhelms Kang in a pretty awesome fight page.

Kang is defeated, and everyone goes back where they belong except the remaining Exiles — Valkyrie, Li'l Wolvie, Iron Lad, Blink, and Valkyrie's horse. They're back on the Moon with the Unseen, who tells the Exiles that now they have to have more adventures in future story arcs to heal the damage done to the multiverse. First, though, the Exiles head to Jersey City to have a funeral for post-apocalyptic Kamala Khan. Then they head to the Bahamas where they meet up with Blink's aunt and rent her vacation home. Next issue, the Exiles face an old West version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!

The Bottom Line

All the setup is out of the way and we have a new Exiles team ready to explore the multiverse. But what happened to Sabretooth? Hopefully, like the Morph sitting in a previous issue, this is leading to something with the old cast members.