X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #29-33
“X-Men Green II”
Writers: Karla Pacheco (#29-32) and Steve Orlando (#33)
Artist: Emilio Laiso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro

Apparently the thinking that everything should have a fresh #1 at the first opportunity doesn’t apply to Infinity Comics. I know it doesn’t really matter, but I rather like that. This is the second arc for Nature Girl’s “X-Men Green” team, who were introduced in a storyline written by Gerry Duggan earlier in the series. Duggan doesn’t return for this arc, but artist Emilio Laiso does, joined this time by Karla Pacheco… except for the final issue, which for some reason is credited solely to Steve Orlando. That’s weird, isn’t it? You’d figure that at the very least there’d be elements of the original plot being used. Hmm.

So. The original X-Men Green arc was a little ambivalent about Nature Girl’s group. On the other hand, Nature Girl was written as so far over the top – not just taking on the fossil fuel industry but killing shopkeepers over plastic bags – as to be a fanatic, and her group is rounded out by Sauron, who is a maniac, and Curse, who is just there to vent her urge to cause trouble. On the other hand, as soon as the story moved away on to more conventional eco-villains, it played her as much more sympathetic. This didn’t feel like nuance so much as a bit of a split personality in the story.

Have these problems been solved? Well, despite being only five issues (which isn’t that much in Infinity Comic terms), this is quite an episodic arc. Issue #29 kicks off with the dysfunctional team stealing a boat so that they can stop an illegal racket in taking tourists to harpoon whales. Pyro is apparently sending them leads for this stuff, which seems unwise given the likelihood of Nature Girl killing the people involved – but at the same time it feels a bit small scale for a group that truly wants to save the planet. And again, there’s a definite sense that only Nature Girl is really motivated by the eco-angle here anyway. Maybe you could read Curse as compelled to stress the negative (because her powers cause her pain when she tries to do positive things), and so looking for an outlet that lets her work around the rules. But that’s not really on the page.

This little incident attracts the attention of Namor the Sub-Mariner, who actually does deal in saving the seas on a global scale, and is thoroughly unimpressed. That’s the majority of issue #30, where the angle is pretty clear: Namor is in one of his relatively sensible moods, he’s completely on side with trying to help the sea creatures, but he’s under no illusion that X-Men Green are anything other than a nuisance and a liability. And nothing in the issue really cuts against that. But since all Namor cares about is getting rid of them, he encourages them to sod off and annoy some poachers instead.

What that leads to, of course, is an altercation with the Black Panther in issue #31. He was busily taking down the poachers anyway – more because they were involved in a bunch of other criminal activity as well – and he gives X-Men Green another lecture about why they should give up and leave this to the grown-ups. Issue #32 brings us to Hordeculture, of all people, who kind of kill time for an issue before giving Nature Girl’s stick back to her. For some reason that prompts her to transform even further into some kind of vengeful nature spirit.

All this seems to be setting up the idea that Hordeculture are manipulating her in some way – or at least that they see some kind of advantage in making sure that her transformation runs its course. Issue #33, which is the Steve Orlando issue, does seem to veer off in a different direction. Not in a wildly obvious way, but Hordeculture drop out of the picture entirely. Instead, we get X-Men Green back to what they were doing in part 1, except on a larger scale and more publicly. The arc ends with them publicly declaring themselves as the X-Men, and the real X-Men deciding that they’re probably going to have to do something about this.

As with the first arc, it looks very good. Lasio has a good grasp of the vertical scrolling format, he’s good with personality, and his redesigns of Nature Girl have been appropriately creepy. I like the sense of the different locations in the world tour, as well. But it doesn’t feel like it really heads anywhere, except in the sense of Nature Girl’s mental state deteriorating a bit further from start to end. The main function of the Black Panther and Namor segments seems to be to cast the whole thing as futile and self-destructive; otherwise, they don’t really add a bit deal. The Hordeculture issue, with hindsight, just seems like a detour. Perhaps they did change plans somewhere along the way and the original ending would have tied this all together more effectively.

These stories seem to have a clearer idea of how they feel about X-Men Green as a concept, but don’t really figure out how to turn that into a direction.