X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills written by Chis Claremont and art by Brent Anderson
The X-Men face off against a new sort of challenge: An evangelical preacher named Stryker is advocating a campaign against mutants since they are "the spawn of the Devil." While Stryker's rhetoric for the cameras is vitriolic, he also has a clandestine organization called "The Purists" who run around killing mutants. The story opens with Magneto, typically the villain, trying to save some young mutants from the misguided vigilantes. He teams up with the X-Men after Professor X, Cyclops, and Storm are apparently killed (really they were kidnapped by the bad guys). They work to uncover Stryker's plans and find out the true fate of their comrades.
Like most of Claremont's work, this is a very wordy story. Characters argue a lot about the issues of humanity and justice. Unfortunately Stryker comes across as a one-note villain. The backstory of his motivation is not particularly convincing but it does generate the conflict and shows how his self-centeredness creates his hatred for mutants. He winds up selectively quoting the New Testament to justify his actions. While Claremont has the X-Men argue from the other side, he also shows a lot of the regular people who have a hard time figuring out which side is right, or even caring about which side is right. The bigger context is interesting and gives a grounding to the story. The ending certainly is a satisfying wrap-up.
This book inspired the plot of X2, the second X-Men film by Bryan Singer. You'll get my opinion on that in the next post.
Recommended.
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