This book is beautiful in every way. Bendis continues to nail the characters moments so well, it’s hard to pick a favorite. From the mentoring moment between Kitty and Jean to the confrontation between Logan and young Scott, each panel manages to add depth to characters we know and love in a manner that just feels “right”. This issue even managed to take pre-Apocalypse Angel (a character I’ve always disliked for being too “vanilla”) and make his plight intriguing.

If I’m not mistaken, the artistic reins have been temporarily handed off to David Marquez. The transition is nearly flawless: Each and every panel in this book is beautifully rendered. There were only 2 visual glitches in the issue, one of which was addressed in the latest episode of the podcast: The splash pages. There are 2 in this issue, and in each one, the story flows contrary to what reader expects. The result is that you’re temporarily jarred out of the story, and have to go back and re-read the sequence to figure out what order to read the lines in.

Other than that, the book is perfect. In fact, it’s so good, the merits easily overshadow the minor glitches to make this issue a solid 5.