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X-Men: Black #3
X-Men: Black - Mystique #1
THAT'S SO RAVEN! What's a day in the life for Raven Darkholme, A.K.A. Mystique? Brutal kills, revenge-fueled chills, seductive thrills...and that's all before breakfast! Award-winning author Seanan McGuire (X-MEN GOLD ANNUAL #2) and rising star Marco Failla take Marvel's multifaceted mutant murderess for a spin! PLUS: Part 3 of X-MEN BLACK: APOCALYPSE!
32 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2018
5 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Seanan McGuire
521 books17.2k followersHi! I'm Seanan McGuire, author of the Toby Daye series (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses), as well as a lot of other things. I'm also Mira Grant (www.miragrant.com), author of Feed and Deadline.
Born and raised in Northern California, I fear weather and am remarkably laid-back about rattlesnakes. I watch too many horror movies, read too many comic books, and share my house with two monsters in feline form, Lilly and Alice (Siamese and Maine Coon).
I do not check this inbox. Please don't send me messages through Goodreads; they won't be answered. I don't want to have to delete this account. :(
Born and raised in Northern California, I fear weather and am remarkably laid-back about rattlesnakes. I watch too many horror movies, read too many comic books, and share my house with two monsters in feline form, Lilly and Alice (Siamese and Maine Coon).
I do not check this inbox. Please don't send me messages through Goodreads; they won't be answered. I don't want to have to delete this account. :(
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 29, 2019
Mystical issue!
This is a one-shot comic book focused on Mystique, and it can be read stand-alone, but it's part of 5 one-shot comic books, each focused in a different X-Men antagonist.
Creative Team:
Writer:Seanan McGuire
Illustrator: Marco Failla
Cover: J. Scott Campbell
FACING MYSTIQUE
Just the cover by J. Scott Campbell (Danger Girl) was enough to buy this one-shot comic book, but when they added the writing of none other than Seanan McGuire (October Daye)?! Uff! Yes, I had to get it!
Raven Darkholme aka Mystique is one of the best X-Men villains ever, and she is shown in great way here, that if you are aware that she’s around is just because she wants it, because if she wants to do a job…
…easily she can do it, not only without leaving a clue about herself…
…but also, she takes care of leaving another escape goat!
Don’t mess with Mystique! You’ll regret it!
This is a one-shot comic book focused on Mystique, and it can be read stand-alone, but it's part of 5 one-shot comic books, each focused in a different X-Men antagonist.
Creative Team:
Writer:Seanan McGuire
Illustrator: Marco Failla
Cover: J. Scott Campbell
FACING MYSTIQUE
Just the cover by J. Scott Campbell (Danger Girl) was enough to buy this one-shot comic book, but when they added the writing of none other than Seanan McGuire (October Daye)?! Uff! Yes, I had to get it!
Raven Darkholme aka Mystique is one of the best X-Men villains ever, and she is shown in great way here, that if you are aware that she’s around is just because she wants it, because if she wants to do a job…
…easily she can do it, not only without leaving a clue about herself…
…but also, she takes care of leaving another escape goat!
Don’t mess with Mystique! You’ll regret it!
October 20, 2018
Pretty simple but cool story from McGuire on Mystique. Im a big fan of her writing and it shows here. Not the best thing ever bur really did enjoy it. The Apocalypse story was quite strange and weird.
October 19, 2018
Introducing Mystique to the X-Men Dark series, this comic book does a good book showing who she is and how she things, but unfortunately, a very pale and not so interesting story to support it. Let's hope it gets better in the next one!
October 21, 2018
Pretty fun story with good artwork!
April 23, 2019
Tell me about a story that is not only badly written but also suffers in credibility just by being set in the Marvel universe.
Ignoring, for now, Mystique's ways of using her shapeshifting ability and her choice of victims, since this comic brought it up: This universe is full of telepaths, magicians. aura readers and super sniffers, all things she can't change and thereby disguise about herself, so how does she keep the heroes "off her back?" Because, keep in mind, she is technically an internationally known terrorist and yet she is allowed to or somehow manages to run free despite her power being nowhere as effective in this world as this comic makes it out to be?
And speaking of what she does. While she uses her powers to transform, she does it basically 99 % to harm other people and while she does it to women as well, that is mostly theft, but for some reason the only people that ever get accused of anything are men. She never accused any woman or child of anything to get what she wanted.
And the company she infiltrates here is Trask Industries. If that means Trask as in Bolivar Trask, the inventor of the sentinels, then the writer either ignores/is ignorant of the fact that such a company probably would have mutant detection technology and so there is no way Mystique would be able to walk in only with her shapeshifting ability. So basically from that moment on all tension was gone, because what except a totally forced story could be expected from this? In fact, Mystique's entire plan only works because suddenly she is immune to most poisons and everyone is written like an idiot here, they have no mutant scanners, no cameras in secured server rooms and no security to speak off, despite the name and mutant terrorists being a thing. And if this wasn't enough, apparently for anything above cleaning stuff, Trask industries only hires light skinned and light haired people, all men I think. So the comic is really not subtlety there.
And the only reasons her mass murder of an entire company staff doesn't fuck it up for all mutants (because they would be the prime suspect with her freeing the mutant girl and all) is because this is a badly written, self-contained story.
They may even have tried to make her sympathetic or wise or something. When she told the rescued mutant girl to learn how the world works, I was thinking: If everyone would act like Mystique does, the world would be full of non-stop mass murder.
And no one would belief the girl when she says a second time that she didn't put anything in the water? Was the author serious? Cameras or not, there would be enough evidence to show that it could not have been the teenage girl who poisoned the company's water supply. Sorry, but whoever wrote this did not do the necessary homework.
After that, there was a boring, bad in terms of biology and science in general and pointless Apocalypse short story.
Ignoring, for now, Mystique's ways of using her shapeshifting ability and her choice of victims, since this comic brought it up: This universe is full of telepaths, magicians. aura readers and super sniffers, all things she can't change and thereby disguise about herself, so how does she keep the heroes "off her back?" Because, keep in mind, she is technically an internationally known terrorist and yet she is allowed to or somehow manages to run free despite her power being nowhere as effective in this world as this comic makes it out to be?
And speaking of what she does. While she uses her powers to transform, she does it basically 99 % to harm other people and while she does it to women as well, that is mostly theft, but for some reason the only people that ever get accused of anything are men. She never accused any woman or child of anything to get what she wanted.
And the company she infiltrates here is Trask Industries. If that means Trask as in Bolivar Trask, the inventor of the sentinels, then the writer either ignores/is ignorant of the fact that such a company probably would have mutant detection technology and so there is no way Mystique would be able to walk in only with her shapeshifting ability. So basically from that moment on all tension was gone, because what except a totally forced story could be expected from this? In fact, Mystique's entire plan only works because suddenly she is immune to most poisons and everyone is written like an idiot here, they have no mutant scanners, no cameras in secured server rooms and no security to speak off, despite the name and mutant terrorists being a thing. And if this wasn't enough, apparently for anything above cleaning stuff, Trask industries only hires light skinned and light haired people, all men I think. So the comic is really not subtlety there.
And the only reasons her mass murder of an entire company staff doesn't fuck it up for all mutants (because they would be the prime suspect with her freeing the mutant girl and all) is because this is a badly written, self-contained story.
They may even have tried to make her sympathetic or wise or something. When she told the rescued mutant girl to learn how the world works, I was thinking: If everyone would act like Mystique does, the world would be full of non-stop mass murder.
And no one would belief the girl when she says a second time that she didn't put anything in the water? Was the author serious? Cameras or not, there would be enough evidence to show that it could not have been the teenage girl who poisoned the company's water supply. Sorry, but whoever wrote this did not do the necessary homework.
After that, there was a boring, bad in terms of biology and science in general and pointless Apocalypse short story.
July 16, 2021
What an absolutely awful story. Disgusting, cruel, and absolutely unnecessary. The author should be ashamed.
October 20, 2018
I confess now and say that I don’t read a ton of X-Men. I’m working through the backlog, but it is a long and slow process (seriously, have you ever looked at just how much is there?). Still, I can safely say that I’ve never read a comic from Mystique’s perspective. I loved the idea of it – how often do you get to hear the other side of the story? And best of all – the whole thing was written by one of my favorite authors, Seanan McGuire. So there was no doubt in my mind that I’d be reading this issue.
I love all the comparisons to art and acting that came up in this issue. I can totally see Mystique looking at how she behaves and what she does as art. Not only does it make everything seem more challenging – fuller of intent and purpose, but it allows her to distance herself from her actions as well. Win-win.
Everything was really well done in this issue. There’s lots of Mystique changing form whenever she gets a chance, but it’s also made very clear that there’s a purpose to each change (even if it’s only to mildly screw over one unnamed character’s life). Her character makes no apologies for her actions or the way she is…and I kind of love that. She is unapologetically enjoying what she does, and she owns that. No, more than that, she’s actively working to enhance her skills in the process. It’s certainly not the actions of a hero…but it’s hard not to respect her on some level.
I really enjoyed the artwork for the series as well. The artist went out of their way to make countless interesting characters that were basically thrown away after a page or two (if that). That takes work. Additionally they’d throw in hints to help us figure out which one was Mystique (though it was easy when she was the only one on the page). I love that they used bold and bright colors too – nothing like what you’d expect in a traditional villains comics.
I love all the comparisons to art and acting that came up in this issue. I can totally see Mystique looking at how she behaves and what she does as art. Not only does it make everything seem more challenging – fuller of intent and purpose, but it allows her to distance herself from her actions as well. Win-win.
Everything was really well done in this issue. There’s lots of Mystique changing form whenever she gets a chance, but it’s also made very clear that there’s a purpose to each change (even if it’s only to mildly screw over one unnamed character’s life). Her character makes no apologies for her actions or the way she is…and I kind of love that. She is unapologetically enjoying what she does, and she owns that. No, more than that, she’s actively working to enhance her skills in the process. It’s certainly not the actions of a hero…but it’s hard not to respect her on some level.
I really enjoyed the artwork for the series as well. The artist went out of their way to make countless interesting characters that were basically thrown away after a page or two (if that). That takes work. Additionally they’d throw in hints to help us figure out which one was Mystique (though it was easy when she was the only one on the page). I love that they used bold and bright colors too – nothing like what you’d expect in a traditional villains comics.
October 28, 2018
I enjoyed the story of Mystique, but I wish it was a little longer and had taken up more of the issue instead of I including the Apocalypse story. I enjoyed Seanan McGuire's writing and the introduced mutant.
July 5, 2019
What the heck, Seanan? I love your October Daye and Wayward Children series, but what are you even doing here? Do you read comics? There were no other main heroes or villains featured here. We just watched Mystique shapeshift a lot and trick people a lot. She came across like a trickster more than usual. She was causing trouble for people just for the Hell of it, and not because it actually benefited her in any way. What was Mystique's motivation?
Anyway, this was a very simple short story. The other mutant main character in this little story never even actually uses her powers. This was just... Yeah. Mystique used her powers a lot, but it didn't even make sense. We were given to understand that she would walk past a potted plant with one person's form, and after she came back into view from behind the potted plant with a completely different form, no one would notice. And also in this universe there is normally mutant detection technology, but apparently not when Seanan McGuire does the writing? Normally there are mutant-power-blocking collars, but for some reason the young mutant introduced in this issue wasn't fitted with one? For some reason?
Seriously, what is Seanan McGuire doing here? I have never seen her name on comic books until this past year. Just this and Spider-Gwen, now called Ghost Spider. Is Seanan actually a comic book fan? Here, I really can't tell. She could have written this just from watching the movies and doing her own little spin on Mystique.
Anyway, this was a very simple short story. The other mutant main character in this little story never even actually uses her powers. This was just... Yeah. Mystique used her powers a lot, but it didn't even make sense. We were given to understand that she would walk past a potted plant with one person's form, and after she came back into view from behind the potted plant with a completely different form, no one would notice. And also in this universe there is normally mutant detection technology, but apparently not when Seanan McGuire does the writing? Normally there are mutant-power-blocking collars, but for some reason the young mutant introduced in this issue wasn't fitted with one? For some reason?
Seriously, what is Seanan McGuire doing here? I have never seen her name on comic books until this past year. Just this and Spider-Gwen, now called Ghost Spider. Is Seanan actually a comic book fan? Here, I really can't tell. She could have written this just from watching the movies and doing her own little spin on Mystique.
December 31, 2018
I don't read a lot of single-issue comics and I've never read X-Men before. But Mystique has always been one of my favorite characters, so I figured it would be a good place to start. And I always love Seanan McGuire's writing.
October 27, 2018
Didn’t care much for either story in this issue to be honest. Mystique was not written in a way I liked and the Apocalypse story was just kind of boring.
May 21, 2020
Tek fasikülde anlatılan bir macera olduğu için pek bir şey beklememek gerekiyor.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews