I bought the first comic because I knew it would have Lockheed in it and I suspected it might connect to Bullet Pryde (which it did). But I have been absolutely surprised at how non-stop fun and engaging this comic has been. It is frantic, densely plotted, and relentless, throwing storylines and characters at you faster than you can blink. And the dialogue is snappy, with a veritable ton of quips, snide asides, and ominous double meanings. Yes, a couple of the Beast one-liners made me cringe, especially the lewd ones. It is like your dad making a lusty comment, if your dad was also covered head to foot in blue hair. But the whole story pushes forward so quickly that the few misfires here and there are quickly forgotten.

And if you have been desperately pining for a bad-ass, hard-drinking purple dragon from outer space, your day has come. He may not actually be sporting a pistol in each claw (yet), but Lockheed is good at two things so far: kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. And he is all out of bubble gum.

When it comes to the art it is still Beast's ridiculously prominent snout that sticks out. A lot of people take one look at that snozz and decide this book is not for me, which is too bad because I am really enjoying Sanders mildly cartoonish style otherwise. It is great for depicting the cavalcade of ridiculous aliens that parade through. His bizarre silicon termite hive beings that pop in near the end of this comic being another example of great alien design. Still, Beast is in every other panel so he is difficult to ignore. I understand people who love a really ridiculously cartoony take on their characters. If everyone drew every character the same, things would get dull very fast. My problem is that Beast is so overly exaggerated compared to everyone else. All the humans look like they could be from King of the Hill, while Beast is from a Hanna Barbara cartoon. It doesn't match and pulls me out of the story a bit. So I took a point for that.

But Beast controversy aside this is a great book and any cosmic/X-fan should give it a go. My one concern is that clearly this book is going to operate on the exterior of Marvel continuity, yet it is doing things that should reverberate across all Marveldom (deporting all known aliens from Earth). I strongly doubt most other books will even acknowledge this book's existence. So while I am enjoying the stories for their own sake, it does lower the stakes a bit.