Marvel Knights X-Men: Haunted

By Brahm Revel & Cristiane Peter (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-586-4

The Marvel Knights imprint began as a way to produce slightly darker and more mature miniseries starring favourite characters in stories intended for older readers. More parallel to rather than actually outside regular continuity, the adventures of familiar stalwarts could be counted as canon or discarded as the readership pleased. Eventually these Knights tales were all absorbed into the mainstream and the imprint generally retired.

In 2013 the subset was revived with a few new limited seriesâ€¦

Marvel Knights X-Men: Haunted #1-5 originally ran from January-May 2014 and featured a particularly messy murder mystery and prime example of why baseline humanity should fear the mutants in their midstâ€¦ and vice versa.

In case you forgotâ€¦

In 1975 Len Wein & Dave Cockrum revived a revered but painfully uncommercial fan favourite with Giant Size X-Men #1, replacing most of the 1960s team – Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl, Beast, Lorna Dane and Havok – with a second generation of edgier international mutants young and old.

With both field-leader Cyclops and wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Charles Xavier remaining to carry on the dream of brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and an emergent off-shoot race with terrifying extra abilities, the stage was set for â€œAll New, All Differentâ€ adventures, and the fledgling squad rapidly became the company’s biggest hit and asset, as well as largest pool of captivating characters.

Comic fans have a seemingly insatiable appetite for untold tales and details, so this grim and gritty, chronologically non-specific yarn featuring Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey,the Beast and Rogue will certainly appeal to older readers with a taste for nasty businessâ€¦

Written and illustrated by Brahm Revel with colour art by Cristiane Peter, the tale begins when telepathic Rachel picks up the psychically broadcast murder of a young unknown mutant. The most potent sense she got was that the boy was being huntedâ€¦

A little technological research by Hank McCoy pinpoints a cluster of three new mutants in rural West Virginia so the team heads off to the Appalachian boondocks. Further poking around had also revealed an unholy number of missing kids in that desolate areaâ€¦

With Wolverine already on edge over the prospect of somebody hunting mutant children, he and fellow covert specialists Kitty and Rogue arrive in a bleak, forbidding and primitive town and start poking around.

Rogue in particular feels the oppressive tone of a time and milieu she thought she had long left behind. Almost as soon as the suspicious strangers arrive, Wolverine arouses the ire of the local biker gang in their favourite watering hole, but while he does what he does best Kitty has found one of the mutants in the backâ€¦

Teenaged Krystal is a drug dealer for her uncle Jasper – the town sheriff – and can control minds, so she easily escapes the X-Men. She is also quite partial to the illicit and unique narcotic produced by cultish isolationists â€œThe Cooksâ€ in their secluded compound and soon after taking another dose is cornered by the patiently searching heroes.

Explaining the situation, the strangers take the oddly subdued Krystal – who lies about her true power – with them as they track down another mutant energy signature.

The trail leads to a cabin in the deep woods, a place the girl is clearly terrified of, and soon all four are experiencing impossible visions.

Wolverine has no time to ponder as he is ambushed by arch-nemesis Sabretooth and a brutal fight ensues. Rogue is then jumped by her former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants compatriots Mystique, Blob and Pyro and soon the shabby hut is filled with an army of old X-enemies and all-out war is underwayâ€¦

Realising something strange is going on, Wolverine battles his way to a young girl at the centre of the savage melee and discovers that deeply troubled Darla is cursed with the ability to materialise other people’s memoriesâ€¦

As he tries to reach her, the vision of the mutant boy’s murder plays out again for all to seeâ€¦

Back at the bar, Jasper delivers the latest batch of the new drug from The Cooks and suggests that the bikers get rid of the prying mutie strangers in townâ€¦

As the X-Men try to calm the deeply troubled dream-weaver, Krystal suddenly blurts out that Darla was the one who killed the missing boy, resulting in the cruel death materialising yet again and sending Wolverine into a murderous rage.

It’s all his team-mates can do to stop him gutting Darla on the spotâ€¦

In an effort to calm the situation the mutants all drive back to town, but when no adult is looking, Krystal slips Darla a bunch of pills from her stash and the memory-girl’s power goes into overdriveâ€¦

As Sentinels, evil mutants and demons from the X-Men’s past ravage the town, whilst the heroes turn on each other with homicidal intent, in the woods The Cooks, believing their particular apocalypse has arrived, head towards town to kill all the humans they can findâ€¦

Darla is off her head and out of control. However, as the town burns, with Rogue and Wolverine engrossed in trying to kill each other and a manifested army of old foes trying to kill everybody else, the truth slowly begins to emerge.

The Cooks’ special ingredient is bled out from captive mutants, boosting their product’s effect on humans and causing even nastier reactions in any Homo Superior who take it. Moreover, the doom-cultists believe that by taking the stuff they can become mutants themselves, leaving behind mortality and freeing them to slaughter the doomed genetic dead-ends of humanityâ€¦

As doped-up, despairing Darla discovers how to control her psychic constructs the chaos spirals to a bloody crescendo and Kitty, largely unaffected by the madness of malignant memories, realises that they have all been played for suckers.

Unfortunately even after the true cause of all the bloodshed comes clean, the carnage has reached a point beyond anybody’s controlâ€¦ and then comes inspirationâ€¦

Not all memories are bad and Kitty’s past is filled with valiant friends and heroes who would give their lives over and again to save the innocent and punish the guiltyâ€¦

With covers and variants by Revel & Peter and Paolo Rivera, Haunted is simultaneously a smart, convoluted mystery and breathtaking primal action comics spectacle that will delight fans of high octane Fights ‘n’ Tights action.

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