Post by Power NeXus on Jan 5, 2012 14:38:44 GMT -5
Writer: Chris Kipiniak
Artist: Matt Smith
The Story
This mini happens when Nightcrawler was not a member of any X-Men team. He is in the process of studying for the position of a priest.
The story begins when Kurt and the priest under whom he is learning give sanctuary to a Thai girl who has just run away from her "owner." She begs Kurt and the priest not to get the police involved, since they would cause her to be deported. Nightcrawler, disgusted and angered by the situation, quickly finds himself going into detective mode to bust up an emerging human trafficking ring.
Since Nightcrawler is a superpowered mutant hero and all the villians in the story are basic criminals and thugs, the conflict in the story isn't about Kurt's fights with other people nearly as much as it is about Kurt's inner fight over what to do. Early in the story, he takes a solid "with great power comes great responsibility" sort of stance and is determined to help the people involved in the human trafficking ring. The conflict comes from him steadily realizing that he might not be able to make a difference at all. One crime leader goes down, and he'll just be replaced by half a dozen others. And some people, despite the crappy deal they've been dealt in life, simply don't want to take a helping hand.
This sort of inner struggle are-my-actions-even-making-a-difference story is nothing truly original or inspiring, but is still quite well written.
Although the story was well-written, the was quite a lack of decent fight scenes in this story. It's not that fight scenes are absolutely crucial to make a book good, but they are about half the reason we read comic books in the first placce. :/
This was not a major flaw, but it did make the story somewhat disappointing.
The Artwork
Matt Smith isn't a particularly bad artist, per se, but his style leaves a lot to be desired IMO. Almost all of my favorite artists are the ones who pay a lot of attention to detail. Smith's art style is really nothing like that.
All things considered, this is a rather good story to read if you are a Nightcrawler fan, or a fan of religiously-based comics. For people who are neither of those things, it would be a very mediocre story.
The story, while largely devoid of good action, was well written. The artwork was not terrible but not great either.
7/10
