As Vulcan tries to take back the Shi’ar throne, Cable and company find themselves in a bad situation in X-Men Red #9, by writer Al Ewing, artist Stefano Caselli, colorist Federico Blee, and letterer Ariana Maher. This is yet another fantastic issue of a fantastic book.

The issue starts with a flashback to Vulcan’s resurrection, with him burning his way out of his egg. In the present, he makes his attack on Xandra, smacking Gladiator, Nova, and Frenzy around as Brand and Mentallo watch. Meanwhile, Cable’s time does some damage to Orbis Stellaris’s robot body. However, his next creations awaken and unravel Manifold. Vulcan takes everyone down and goes to attack Xandra, but Sunspot reveals it’s been him the whole time. Stalemated, Vulcan flies off to the Autumn Palace to confront Xandra’s protector.

This is a great comic, and it’s hard to pick the best moments, but the beginning flashback is brilliant. There’s an info page where Xavier talks about how he’s going to do psychic surgery on Vulcan and how he never affects mutant minds and blah blah blah. It’s so great because of the whole situation with Vulcan, Darwin, Petra, and Sway on Krakoa. Havok questioning if Xavier is the right person to do this is such an excellent moment, especially because Xavier can hear him.

From there, the issue is just balls to the action. Vulcan’s attack on the Shi’ar royal embassy is as cool as imagined. It’s almost sad that the book cuts away from it several times, honestly. Ewing does a nice job of setting up the action and writing Vulcan’s unhinged yet badass dialogue. The shocks of the chapter are awesome as well, as there are some wonderful cliffhanger pages that become terrific moments.

Caselli and Blee are a fine artistic team, and everything looks great, but there are a few errors with the art. For example, Xavier in the beginning is way too buff, and his Cerebro helmet is too slim. However, the most egregious is Sunpost. Roberto Da Costa is Afro-Brazillian. He has dark skin and African features. In this book, his skin color is too light, and his features are just a white person’s. Other artists have made sure to give him the correct look, but Caselli and Blee aren’t. That’s not a good thing.

X-Men Red #9 is an action-packed issue. It has momentum and is just fun to read. It keeps the SWORD part going and combines it with the Arakko plots. The art is mostly great, but there are some character mistakes in the art that range from silly to insulting. It’s still an amazing comic, though, and much better than X-Men.

Grade: A