S.W.O.R.D. BY AL EWING VOL. 2

S.W.O.R.D. has been a surprisingly good book and that's despite the title being the go-to X-Men crossover book. Al Ewing always seemed to make those crossover tie-ins fit in perfectly with the comic's narrative. That continues here with S.W.O.R.D. #7 and Cable: Reloaded #1 which are both part of The Last Annihilation event. They also both appear in The Last Annihilation trade. Honestly, they fit better there because they give you a full story. Here, we touch on The Last Annihilation before moving on, never getting the conclusion from that event within these pages.But that's ok because both of those books also have stuff in them that affects our ongoing S.W.O.R.D. adventures. Mars is now a mutant controlled planet, renamed Arakko. Storm is the ruler of that planet and it has become the diplomatic hub of the Sol system, effectively leaving Storm (and mutants in general) as speakers for the entirety of Arakko and Earth.And that means so many people are not amused.We also have a huge change in Cable. He's back to being his older self as detailed in Cable's own recent ongoing series (it lasted two volumes). That changes the dynamic of Cable's place in S.W.O.R.D. and sets Agent Brand on edge on how to deal with this less-starry-eyed and more perceptive security chief.Leaving The Last Annihilation, we get four issues that are a fully self-contained storyline to close out this collection (and the S.W.O.R.D. ongoing). There's a lot going on in these last four issues and so many reveals that get blasted at us. The biggest takeaway is that Agent Brand has a lot of "evil" machinations going on. She's not the ally of Krakoa that she's letting everyone believe and stuff goes on here that will probably change how you see the character.Also: Storm as ruler of Arakko is awesome.The art here is all over the place. Stefano Caselli illustrates issue #7 and does beautiful work as usual. The rest of the collection is serviceable but not up to Caselli's standards. That's too bad because the first volume has fantastic art throughout.All in all, S.W.O.R.D. is a great Space-Spy comic. I'm sad that this is the end of this series but happy it will continue as X-Men Red. This book leaves a lot of things up in the air so I'm hoping X-Men Red will address some dangling plot threads. This is one of the better X-Titles and it's a shame it only got two volumes.

Love the cosmic feel of this. Not sure if more will be made but I certainly hope so.

I'm not sure why this collection even exists. Parts of other stories being told elsewhere make up 3 of the issues collected. And the 4th and 5th issues were kind of just mediocre. I haven't kept up with the X-Men universe, and this was a horrible book to try and jump back in on. Only read if you have followed everything going on in Marvel nowadays. Because otherwise this collection makes absolutely no sense.