X-Men Legends #6 - Marvel Comics

X-MEN LEGENDS No. 6, October 2021

Packed with plenty of courtroom drama and sense-shattering shenanigans at the Latverian Embassy, Peter David’s script for Issue Six of “X-Men Legends” certainly delivers the goods when it comes to recapturing the atmosphere of the American author’s run as the writer on “X-Factor” during the early Nineties. Indeed, the opening scene of Havoc losing his temper with the police force when they overrule his promise that the local authorities “won’t open fire” upon the renegade mutants must have immediately taken most of this comic’s audience back to the days when Alex Summers and his team were still badly mistrusted by the government, even though the roster was salaried by the Pentagon.

However, perhaps this twenty-page periodical’s greatest ‘hook’ comes with its handling of Doctor Doom, and the disconcerting question as to whether the terrorists opposing the tinpot dictator are just as cold-heartedly evil as Victor or not. This conundrum as to where the readers’ sympathies lie is raised just as soon as Beltane is shown triumphantly displaying an unconscious Rahne Sinclair upon a crucifix on top of the consulate’s roof, and the sheer horror Valerie Cooper expresses upon seeing such an appalling sight.

Perhaps understandably, Wolfsbane guts the white-haired psychic within an inch of her life once she regains both consciousness and her wolf-form. But its then later shown that the rest of the ‘holier than thou’ fanatics feel their comrade-in-arms has been greatly wronged by the former New Mutant and try to take some moral high ground over Sinclair when they find her remorsefully sat at Beltane’s bedside in hospital. This self-righteousness is more than irritating and seeing as it comes at a time when the likes of Samhain were going to quite happily murderously massacre the embassy’s entirely innocent staff simply because "we have to show the world we're serious", arguably loses the 'freedom fighters' any empathy which their opposition to the heavily armoured monarch might have initially generated.

In fact, many bibliophiles will doubtless take a great deal of satisfaction from this publication’s final few panels, in which Todd Nauck beautifully pencils Rahne knowingly stepping aside for an enraged Doom as he enters Beltane’s medical room to doubtless enact a truly terrible revenge upon the Zefiro Clan for killing his subjects, defiling his New York City-based mission and even attempting to assassinate the Supreme Leader for the Kingdom of Latveria himself; “You dare bark orders at me? Do you still not appreciate the gravity of your situation.?”

The regular cover art of "X-MEN: LEGENDS" #6 by Todd Nauck & Rachelle Rosenberg