In Victorian times, Mystique and Destiny investigate one Nathaniel Essex in Immortal X-Men #8, by writer Kieron Gillen, artist Michele Bandini, colorist David Curiel, and letterer Clayton Cowles. This is a fun little flashback issue.

This issue centers on Mystique and Destiny and is told from Mystique’s perspective. In 1943, she follows Destiny to a secret US government research facility. She finds her experimenting on mutants and confronts her. She learns it’s all to find Sinister. This brings her into another flashback to Victorian England, when the two of them worked to discover what Nathaniel Essex was up to after several unsolved murders. They figure out Sinister was behind them, using his research to transform himself into something more powerful. They apprehend him and put him into Bedlam Asylum, where he turns up “dead.” Later, they investigate his home and find four broken open cloning pens, each with a spade, club, diamond, and heart.

Gillen just spent months running the best Marvel event since Secret Wars, but it’s nice to get him back to doing this book outside of an event. Of course, this chapter is basically set-up for Sins Of Sinister, but it also plays into the entire conflict of the Krakoa era and even the first issue of this comic. Gillen writes Mystique and Destiny like no one else; if this book was just the two of them, it would still be the top book in the X-Men line.

This chapter doesn’t really tell the reader much they didn’t know: Sinister’s time as Essex in Victorian times has been illustrated, and his modification at the hands of Apocalypse is well known. The real meat of this issue is that Sinister was already predicting the war between mutants and machines back then, even before machines were a thing. It’s an interesting little wrinkle to the story of Sinister and reveals why he became who he is now. The ending plays into the whole Doctor Stasis thing from X-Men, which is fine, but it’s one of those times when a fantastic writer has to do something to make a mediocre writer’s work make sense. Would Gillen have gone this way if Duggan didn’t? That’s impossible to know.

Bandini and Curiel are back on art, and they do a great job. Bandini’s style is enough like Werneck’s that there’s no shock in the art change. There’re a few places where Bandini’s line work isn’t as strong as it is in others, but overall he does a lot to make the script sing. Curiel’s colors give the pencil just the right amount of embellishment to really shine.

Immortal X-Men #8 doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s still an excellent read. Gillen writing about Mystique, Destiny, and Sinister never gets old. Bandini and Curiel do a good job on the art, even if there’re some places where the pencils aren’t the strongest. This is yet another fine outing for this book.

Grade: B+