Writer: Karl Bollers
Penciller: Carlo Pagulayan
Inker: Dennis Crisostomo
Colorist: Transparency Digital
Cover Artist: Greg Horn
As you could tell from my prior review, I would be eagerly awaiting to read what the Emma Frost story had in store for us next. They seem to be sticking with the six issue story lines, which I quite like. I think it gives ample time to develop a full story with decent character development. As you can see they’ve changed artists for this group of issues. Pagulayan has managed to do quite a comparable job to Randy Green, so we don’t have any drastic shifts in the artistic quality, thankfully. Karl Bollers stepped up to write these six issues as well, so the caliber or writing is on par with the previous set.
Unfortunately I didn’t quite get into this story nearly as much as the first issues. Don’t get me wrong this was still a very well developed as I would expect from Karl Bollers based on the first group of issues. It just didn’t grab me nearly as much as the first. The conflict and tension created in “Higher Learning” was just so much more vivid to me. “Mind Games” has us deal with an Emma that suddenly feels a lot older, but still very naive to the world around her. She’s still trying to grasp the full breadth of her power and is desperate for money, which she needs to live. Still at the core of her being she’s a generally nice person and seems to want to do good, she just seems to attract trouble to her. Such as the fellow she ends up staying with. He’s a really great guy and very supportive of her. Problem is he owes some serious money to a loan shark and is in way over his head. Now Emma is caught up in this whole fiasco with him. It is sort of a tragic tale, because neither of them are really evil people and they just want to try to make their way in the world. Problem is he tried to take a shortcut. I think this story really gives us more insight in where Emma’s life seems to have gone wrong. Like I said, she really is the tragic villain because you want so much for things to be okay for her, but she gets pushed way too far over the edge. However, I think this background story does make sense for her character where she eventually joined the X-Men in the end.
Anyway, that’s basically my thoughts on this. A short review because not much has changed. The art is still very well done and the story is still told quite well also. We also are still treated to the alluring covers by Greg Horn and I hope that won’t be changing anytime soon! Basically if you enjoyed the first issue I think you’ll like this one as well. I just don’t think it really went up against the first one as well. Something just struck a cord with me for that one. I don’t want to downplay “Mind Games” too much, because it is still a good story, but I suspect you get my point by now.
Overall Rating: 4.0/5