Chlidren Of The Atom #2
The team has a rematch with the Hell's Belles in Children Of The Atom #2 by writer Vita Ayala, artist Bernard Chang, colorist Marcelo Maiolo, and letterer Travis Lanham. Ayala uses this issue to focus on another character, Cherub, and also adds a new wrinkle to the whole thing.
Captain America, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel go to the Krakoan embassy to talk to Xavier about the new team of young mutants but get Mystique and Storm instead. After a tense standoff, the human heroes leave, and Storm sends Mystique to look for the kids. After talking to his mom and sister, Cherub meets the rest of the team at the Dazzler concert and meets up again with his friend Cole. The team gets news from Daycrawler that the Hell's Belles have escaped and go confront them. The fight goes well at first, but the Belles are able to get the advantage. Things are looking bad until Storm and the X-Men show up, stopping the fight by offering the Belles Krakoan asylum. She makes the same offer to the team, but they turn it down, and Storm leaves them with a communicator they can use to get in touch with the team. Later that night, they go back to the Krakoan gate to try to get through it again.
Ayala focuses on Cherub and begins the issue with him basically talking about people making assumptions about him and who he is based on how he looks. This whole thing feels like a mission statement for the book- something is not right with the team. They look a certain way, but looks can be deceiving. The narrative crux of this book so far has been whether they are mutants or not. The fact that they can't get through the Krakoan gate doesn't make the argument one way or another. However, parts of Cherub's monologue and some dialogue from Gimmick give the impression that maybe they aren't mutants. Even that could be a bit of misdirection, just something that readers are assuming based on what they're seeing.
The exchange between Storm and the three Avengers is a lot of fun. This isn't friendly Storm, the reasonable X-Men leader. This is imperious goddess Storm, and she's not going to put up with any guff from anyone. The attitude of mutants towards everyone is both completely warranted and also a bit worrying- this type of attitude leads to bad places. Storm showing up to save the day later is also a great moment because it's part of the new way that mutants do things- she's not there to fight but to gather her people together. The fact that she gives team one of her communicators says a lot about it, though.
Chang's art does a wonderful job in this issue. The action scene at the end is great. Its triumph is in the way Chang lays out the pages and uses panel shape. The panels are almost like slashes, widening from one side to the other and really sell the action. The change in panels- from the boxy shapes of the beginning of the issues to the diagonal slashes of the action scene works amazingly. On top of that, the action is well-choreographed and clear.
Children Of The Atom #2 builds the story even more. Ayala uses Cherub's monologue to raise the series's main question: are things what they seem, or is there more than meets the eye? It works wonderfully, and they do a great job throughout the issue with the characters and events. This is an exciting book, made all the better by Chang's expert pencils and page layouts. Children Of The Atom is one of the most interesting X-Men's books being published right now.
