X-Men #8
The X-Men face off against MODOK in X-Men #8, by writer Gerry Duggan, artist Javier Pina, colorist Marte Gracia, and letterer Clayton Cowles. Synch gets some much-needed development in this issue, and the art is pretty good, but everything else about the issue isn't great.
MODOK unleashes a chemical that manipulates the amygdala on a cruise ship. The X-Men come to handle it and split up, with Synch and Wolverine going on the ship, Jean, Cyclops, and Polaris saving people from the water, and Rogue watching a cloaked ship. On the ship, Wolverine and Synch deal with MODOK, and Cyclops goes into his head to threaten him. Later, at the Treehouse, Synch tells Cyclops about how he used Jean's powers to mindwipe Ben Urich and how he wants to quit the X-Men, something Cyclops won't let him do.
Duggan hasn't done a very good job of characterization in this book, and this issue isn't exactly great for that, but it's better than previous issues. Synch has long just felt like a set of powers in this book; he's done cool things, but there's really no character there. This issue finally has Duggan paying off Synch always telling Wolverine they should talk, and it's… fine. It's not really bad, it's not really good, and it doesn't really say anything about anything. It's telling when a character's best moments in a book are from another writer's story, but that's where X-Men is with Duggan at the helm.
This being Duggan, he also has to do some out-of-character stuff with Synch. While Synch wanting to leave the team because his mind isn't right sort of makes sense, it's not really the kind of thing he'd do, especially if he wanted to be around Wolverine. The other out-of-character thing is him mindwiping Ben Urich. On the one hand, it's good that Duggan didn't have Jean do it but to have Synch do something so immoral entirely on his own feels wrong, even with the explanation Duggan gives. The fact he regrets it is in character, though, so there's that, and it playing into him wanting to leave the team also scans, but it feels like Duggan never really had a bead on who Synch was to begin with and that's why he invented this plot. The MODOK parts of the book are perfectly fine, but the lack of action feels weird since the action is one of the few places where Duggan has actually done a good job in this book.
Even though he doesn't have a lot of cool action to draw, Pina does a great job with what Duggan gives him. His MODOK looks pretty great, and there's a scene where there's an explosion behind Wolverine, and her hair is fluttering, and she's posed that looks amazing. It's one of the book's highlights because of the way story and art melds in this moment.
X-Men #8 sees an underused X-Man finally gets some use, but it's hard to say whether it's good use or not. It feels like Duggan has kind of invented this version of Synch from whole cloth, and it's not great. The plot is just sort of there and feels like an excuse to use MODOK. Pina's art looks great, even though Duggan doesn't give him a lot of action to draw. It's yet another disappointing issue in a book that's been full of them.
