Marauders #2 Review: Looking Good in Red

Writer: Gerry Duggan / Artists: Matteo Lolli, Federico Blee / Marvel We’re deep into the Dawn of X now, fellow Black X-nerds, and it is time to dig deep and get serious. The hype has passed and over the next several months, some of these books are going to stand and some will fall. I’m not going to pretend to be able to predict which is which. I’m not even sure that the ones I like will survive the culling. I do know it’ll give us plenty to talk about in the meantime. Marauders #2 comes out swinging to stay on the roster, staying light and easy as some of the other books go fantastically dark places (did you read Fallen Angels #1?). But does it work? The Art Alright, we all saw it in #1 and we’re seeing it here in #2 — the artists are utterly unfamiliar with drawing and coloring Black characters. In a panel together, I don’t know that Gateway (Aboriginal Australian), Storm (Kenyan, Black American), and Bishop (Black American) should have the same skin tone as each other, and everyone else (HT to fellow X-Reviewer Chris for the observation).

In one or two panels, Storm is brown-skinned. Elsewhere she fades between washed out white and pale with brown around her hair. Bishop’s hair shouldn’t look like he has pipecleaners glued to his bald scalp. These are the tightest cornrows in history. I’m not going to get all down in it, as so many others have already done so. Suffice it to say, despite some nice panels — the moment the crew finds out about the ending of X-Force #1 is fa…