X-Men Red #2

THE HATE MACHINE pt II

Written by Tom Taylor
Penciled by Mahmud Asrar
Cover by Travis Charest
Published March 7, 2018

    Lakshay Singh shows Trinary the fortified walls of her new bunker. He knows what she did, but with Jean Gray allegedly blowing off someone's head last week, she's no longer the lead story. Still she vows to be released soon.
   That release will likely come at the hands of the X-Men, but with anti-mutant outrage at a high point, they currently find themselves in Wakanda after seeking asylum. Gabby makes herself at home and discovers Gentle, one of the world's strongest mutants who must meditate to control his powers.
   Jean is interrupted by word they've just received an encrypted message. Trinary, a mutant technopath explains she hacked into male CEO's bank accounts and redistributed the money to women, but now she's likely been captured.
   The team immediately heads to India to free her. There they find Lakshay and telepathically trick him into bringing them into Trinary's prison. With Jean controlling him, the team breaks in and frees her before Marvel Girl gets distracted. The crowd outside riots and she puts them all to sleep. Something's wrong though, and the few armed rioters who don't fall asleep fire a machine gun at her.
   Nightcrawler sprints to her aid, bamfing ahead of the rest of the team. When he gets to her, she's quited the assailants but allowed Lakshay to dial up an emergency code. A sentinel rumbles to life with mutant destruction on it's mind. What will happen next? We'll have to wait to find out as this issue is left to be continued.
   So with the loss of young Jean recently in the pages of Venom, we've gained the old one back to lead a different team of mostly women...? Ok. I get it and that's cool. Still, do we need yet another X-Men Color Crew to read when the other titles are already somewhat coasting? X-Men Gold already has the sensitive Nightcrawler angle, and though issue 3 teases Gambit, he's already dusted off his X-Membership in the pages of Astonishing. This title is going to need more. I'm already usually unimpressed with Tom Taylor in the pages of Wolverine. If he's going to write another book, he better look like sharpening his pencil. I give this one a 6/10.

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