If you want to read the perfect villain-centered story, this astonishing piece of art is for you Read Full Review

X-Men Before the Fall: The Sinister Four #1 delivers a masterfully crafted storyline, blurring the lines between good and evil. The comic's exceptional writing compels readers to sympathize with morally ambiguous characters. Read Full Review

An excellent issue in terms of character, story, and art. Sinister Four builds on what we know of multiple antagonists, making them more fleshed out and interesting as it builds towards Fall of X. Read Full Review

As the title X-Men Before the Fall suggests, change is coming. Many years ago one man made an attempt to alter the course of history. His decision led to an adventure that ended with four individuals emerging with powers. Individually their stories would go on to become the stuff of legends in the Marvel Universe. Read Full Review

Bits and pieces of that were shining through towards the end of X-Men: Before the Fall The Sinister Four #1, however, not as bad as some of the other X-books on the market right now. We need some pep in our step in order to get this show on the road before its too late and this setup is slow-moving. Hopefully, we Fall fast without any dangling plot threads to tug on later. Give fans a good, clean, easy-to-follow, straightforward, story that ENDS! And then, let the next writers start fresh. Let me know what you think, have a great week, and God Bless! Read Full Review

It's a stellar issue that does well at building the tension for the coming Fall of X. Read Full Review

X-Men: Before the Fall The Sinister Four #1 provides an interesting look into the dynamic between Mother Righteous and Dr. Stasis, but it is just contributing to the oversaturation of the Sinister brand. The art is superb and the writing remains a high point of the X-Men: Before the Fallseries, but it never manages to hit the notes that it is desperately trying to achieve. Read Full Review

Men: Before the Fall - Sinister Four #1 is let down by its structure. Read Full Review

Absolutely brilliant! I loved every panel of this book. I love this era of the x-men it has been amazing!

There are things I'll quibble with — in particular I always find the continuity implant trope, where a new character has secretly always been in the background, to be cheap in a way that's beneath Gillen — but those are balanced nicely by the usual joys of Gillen writing less-than-benevolent old women who can peer through the veil of fiction as needed. Doctor Stasis has always been the least interesting and impressive of the four, but Gillen & Medina do a fine job of making him both foolish enough to casually put himself in Mother Righteous's clutches but still clever enough to be playing his own game. Probably the first of these "before the fall" specials to really get me excited about the stories to come.

Gillen has done a nice job with the Sinisters and this one was worth the read. Medina is great all throughout as usual.

This was a nicely-written, character-driven one-shot for Before the Fall. The four Sinisters have all been depicted throughout Destiny of X, and I think Gillen brings the three "non-original" together her nicely. Despite the minimal use of Orbis Stellaris, I don't think we was needed through the bulk of this story. Having Stasis and Righteous together throughout the majority of this issue was a nice way to create emotional investment and I thought Gillen wrote that well. Overall, I'm very interested to see what happens with Sinister as Fall of X approaches.

Continuing the BEFORE THE FALL preludes to the upcoming Fall of X event (catch my review of last week’s HERALDS OF APOCALYPSE), SINISTER FOUR #1 hits shelves today. The one-shot, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Paco Medina, showcases the four major Essex clones we’ve been following over the current Destiny of X story arc — Mister Sinister, Doctor Stasis, Orbis Stellaris, and Mother Righteous. Full disclosure: Krakoan Mister Sinister has been one of my FAVORITE Marvel characters so this review will be influenced by that!

‘SINISTER FOUR’ is a slightly misleading title as the main story in this one-shot primarily focuses on two of the clones, Doctor Stasis & mother Righteous, and their attempts at wining, dining, and intertwining each other to gain insights into each other’s endgame plans. The book opens in a flashback to the OG Nathaniel & Rebecca Essex courting each other in Victorian London. We see their romance blossom into a marriage proposal and it’s a weirdly touching moment for a character who we have not seen show true emotion very often.

The story then shifts to the present were Doctor Stasis, who has kept the original Nathaniel’s undying love for Rebecca, is planning a dinner “date” with Mother Righteous. Readers observe a tit-for-tat conversation between two clones who we initially think might actually be rekindling some version of the long-lost romance between their original selves. Ulterior motives are the norm for any good Essex and by the end of the issue we see that both Stasis and Righteous were using the time together for their own agendas, including connections to the broader Orchis plans.

Throughout the book, Gillen’s writing offers readers a complex and character-driven narrative that fills in plenty of background and motivation for what’s ahead. Stasis is given a backstory and motivations that make him almost an ideal anti-hero, while Righteous is given much needed depth as a major player. Both of these characters have suffered through lengthy periods of being one-note caricatures, but Gillen has seemingly redeemed them both and given some much needed momentum to the plans that will likely unfold in (hopefully) short order.

Medina’s art is equally on point in this book. The back and forth conversation over dinner is displayed as a quasi-fencing match featuring a wonderful mix of close-up shots to highlight detailed facial reactions and wide-angle shots of the full room that elicit a level of tension building with each panel. The color choices by Edgar Delgado and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo provided a perfect balance to the drama, with bright, bold colors on every page.

While the Krakoan Age is on it’s last legs, I can’t help but wish we were witnessing it through the lens Gillen is offering for the Essex clan here. SINISTER FOUR and HERALDS OF APOCALYPSE are almost diametrically opposed stories that represent the fun yet complex political drama that Krakoa’s arrival offered (SINISTER FOUR) vs. the drawn-out, unnecessary rehashing of ideas without resolution that have come to plague the Hickman-less Destiny of X arc (HERALDS OF APOCALYPSE).

Rating: 8.5/10 more

I suppose this is all important background info about Righteous and Stasis, and it's written and drawn in a suitably entertaining fashion. I dunno, it didn't wow me. The artist seems stretched a little thin, and I'm not sure this really needed to be a big bonus-sized issue.

I pretty much fell in love with Mother Righteous at first sight, but it seems like every further revelation about her is designed to dampen my enthusiasm. Particularly the news that she's a clone of Rebecca Essex rather than a gender-swapped Nathaniel. (Perhaps I'd be more enthusiastic about the idea if this was my first exposure to it rather than the clumsy scene in X-Men #23.)

(Cover Date: September, 2023)