257. X-Men vol 1 #151 to 154 ... Marvel ...

And so it ends ... Grant Morrison's awesome vision of the men and women of X ... and how did he end it all? By pulling one huge final sprawling tale that has subplots dredged up everywhere ... including the final pages of 150 (our previous review) and a tale about the cosmos, the Phoenix force and even the first days of Earth's formation! I kid you not here!

Anyway, at the end of 150, we saw for some inexplicable reason, after Mags was defeated, the spirit of the school was gone and Scott sort of gave up on everything ... but also we have a small part where Beast said he realized what was going on ... and in the final bits ... a jump into the future! So what's that all about?

Well, basically the heinous villain of the tale is finally revealed. You see, when Earth was first formed, there was a first self aware sentient being who was not really a being in the common sense more like an awareness that can control DNA and this thing calling itself Sublime has been riding each wave of creation ... from Dinosaurs to us the humans and never worried because they have the ability to control DNA ... genome and thus their/ its fate is protected

Until mutants emerged ... with mutants, the abilities are ... anything goes with some potentially becoming invulnerable and thus unable for this thing to merge with on any levels ... fearing one day that it might be supplanted by the mutants, it thus engineered the destruction of the mutants

And so queue 150 years into the future ... where the world is torn apart thanks to this thing ... that has possessed the Beast's body and is creating hordes of creatures splicing DNA trying to totally eliminate mutants ... naturally in its way stood a loose group of survivors and heroes ... and some of the existing X-Men ... not sure how they all survived but some include Wolverine, 3 of the Cuckoos, Martha and Cassandra Nova ..

And the best one of all ... a human young man and his Sentinel guardian ... shades of love there too!

Lots of big ideas, lots of big fighting scenes ... full of emotions and the return of Jean Grey and perhaps this time, the true meaning of sacrifice ... very touching ending! And a spark of hope is planted in the final two pages

One gets the feeling that an extra issue would have helped this story along instead of issue 154 feeling so cramped ... still it was enjoyable and Marc Silvestri came along for these 4 issues turning in some of the best work of his career!

Ratings: 9/10