Hellions #8 // Review
The Hellions battle Cameron Hodge in Hellions #8, by writer Zeb Well, artist Stephen Segovia, colorist David Curial, and letterer Ariana Maher. Wells and company strike the perfect balance between humor, action, and pathos in this issue, and it's an extremely entertaining ride.
As Cameron Hodge begins to go into a long-winded soliloquy about why mutants should die, Nanny and Wild Child run past him in their zeal to complete the mission. The rest of the Hellions stay behind and act as a distraction, fighting Hodge's robotic minions, except for Empath, who runs off because his powers don't work on robots. The robots are able to hit them with power inhibitors, limiting their combat effectiveness. Nanny and Wild Child make it to the ship, and Nanny makes a surprising discovery. The robots bring a captured Empath to Hodge, who tries and fails to affect Hodge's mind. Hodge thinks it's because the techno-organic virus protects him, but Empath reveals he doesn't have a mind- he's a robot. Hodge doesn't believe it and asks his robots to attack him, thinking they can't, but they do, revealing the truth. The robots, free of his influence, stop fighting the Hellions and change their mind about mutants in general. Psylocke, at the orders of Krakoa, uploads a virus, killing all the robots. The Hellions leave, and it's revealed that one of them survived on Nanny's ship, a new child for her to take care of.
The first few pages of this book are pretty wonderful. Cameron Hodge is about to go into one of his long-winded diatribes about mutants and religion, and Nanny and Wild Child just completely ignore him. It's one of those things that rarely happens in comics- the heroes always end up listening to the villain rail on and on- and Hodges is used to it happening that way. When it doesn't, he's completely taken aback and freaks out. It's a great moment, and Wells plays it perfectly.
Beyond that, this issue also does a lot of great stuff. Psylocke's uploading the virus to the robots is a Krakoan directive- AI has never proven to be the friend of mutantkind, so whenever Krakoans come across, they're to upload viruses and destroy it. What makes this occurrence so interesting is Havok had started to bond a little bit with the robots- the robots had realized that mutants weren't evil and saw them as liberators from Cameron Hodge. As the virus destroyed them, they changed their minds about mutants. Elsewhere, Wild Child remarks that Amenth isn't done with him or Nanny, which is quite portentous. Finally, Nanny having one of the last surviving robots opens up a whole can of worms.
Stephen Segovia's art is pretty great. He's able to capture Hodge's consternation at being ignored and is just generally good at capturing the character and his reactions. His action penciling carries the fight scenes and makes them exciting. Throughout the book, his character acting really shines through, making everything pop.
Hellions #8 is another example of why this is one of the most interesting of the X-Men books. It combines a good sense of humor with a lot of dark stuff, making the whole thing more palatable. Wells is the perfect writer for this book, and Segovia's art really makes his work shine. While this isn't a groundbreaking book by any means, it's very entertaining and a treat to read.
