"Beast of Burden"
Writer: Devin Grayson
Artwork by: Udon Studios
Month Published: May 2002
Takes Place: ? (Most likely after "Beast of Bayville" and before "Day of Reckoning, Part 1", but there is an inconsistency, explained later, that negates this.)
Synopsis/Review: After a brief one-page
introduction to the New Mutants and Beast, this comic gets started. The
plot for this one is nice, simple, and pretty light-hearted. Most of the
comic is dedicated to just a game of baseball amongst the X-Men, like in
the beginning of the episode "Under Lock
& Key", only longer. (Although, really, this comic came out half
a year before "Under Lock & Key", so it's really the other way around.)
They initially play baseball outside, then bring it into the Danger Room
when Of course, they all cheat and use their powers and all, which makes
it cool... No real problem that needs to be solved or anything like that.
There's a rather minor secondary plot point of Storm and Professor X trying
to find an "official" team leader for the X-Men (which, of course, turns
out to be Scott), and Beast and Xavier confirming the deal on the former's
joining the X-Men, but that only takes up, like, 3 pages of the comic.
Some people may be bothered by this rather simplistic plot, but I like
it, as long as it doesn't happen in every issue, of course. It's nice to
just see the X-Men hanging out.
They all use rather
creative ways of "cheating", though- Nightcrawler teleports to all the
bases in sucession, Boom Boom uses one of her little explody-things on
a control box to cause the Danger Room lights to all turn bright red, making
it impossible for Cyclops to see when he's at bat...heheh.
Basically, the way they
shake things up in the comic so that it's just not "throw ball using powers,
hit ball using powers, catch ball using powers" is that it sorta focuses
around Evan's temper again. He's initally captain of one of the teams,
but he loses it when Multiple unintentionally uses his powers. (Which,
of course, is stupid, since they're all using their powers if they have
any relevance to baseball at all.) Beast calls Evan out, but Evan eventually
comes back in, having gotten over the whole thing.
The semi-cliffhanger
ending is pretty good, too. Beast (whose e-mail address is HMcCoy@xnet.edu,
by the way) gets an e-mail from "An Admirer" wishing to fund some of his
genetic research, and it's implied that the guy wants to meet with him.
I wonder who he is....?
Art Comments: The cover art for this comic is really good, with proper proportions, shading, lines, and all that. It's basically a display of Beast and all the New Mutants (minus Magma, Berzerker, and Jubilee for some reason), with an "X" under them. Very nice. Unfortunately, once you get into the actual comic, the art is as sloppy as always (with the exception of a couple of close-up panels), and Beast's proportions are way off- he's far too bulky.
Last Words: As I said before, this
comic is simple and fun. However, one noticeable thing contradicts X-Men:
Evolution canon. Both Boom Boom AND Beast are X-Men at the same time. In
the cartoon, Boom Boom left the X-Men two episodes before Beast joined,
so this is impossible.
Other than that rather noticeable oddity,
the rest is pretty nice. Oh, yeah, and my favorite part of the comic- Spyke
says "Are you on CRACK!?!" to Beast when the big guy makes what Spyke thinks
is a bad call. Heheh, Spyke is finally talking like you'd expect a black
inner-city New Yorker to talk...well, minus the cussing and all...
Overall Rating: 8/10 Great