That Which Luke Is Reading: Saturday, June 7th, 2014

by Luke McCullough · June 7, 2014

X-Men Legacy written by Simon Spurrier and penciled by Tan Eng Huat with covers by Mike del Mundo

Simon Spurrier popped on my radar when he started writing the weekly free webcomic Crossed: Wish You Were Here (NSFW, here), which replaced Warren Ellis’s Freakangels as the webcomic published by Avatar Press. Crossed: WYWH is highly recommended, if you have a strong stomach for violence, blood, and sex usually mixed together all at the same time.

This series finds him taking on one of the more maligned and under utilized of the X-Men universe and it does it by taking him out of the “core” X-Men stories and sets him off on his own. David Heller, a.k.a Legion is the son of Charles “Professor X” Xavier, and is the most powerful mutant (and if he is not the most powerful, he is one of the most powerful). He has a multitude of known and unknown mutant powers. These include: teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, and the ability to reshape reality itself. Problem is each power is controlled by a different personality, some of which are psychopaths or worse. At the beginning of the series, Legion’s main personality is coming to grips with his situation and try to exert control over his various personalities. Then shocked by recent events in the X-Men books, he decides the need to protect the mutants by proactively going after threats both mutant and otherwise.

All of this is the first issue of the series and the book goes from there both with Legion fighting inside himself and outside, trying to figure out his own way. Some how, all of this comes out both disturbing and somehow light-hearted. There is even a bit of a love story thrown in.

For fans of books like Secret Six or X-Factor, books set in the Marvel or DC universes, but not bound to them or the way they typically tell stories or the people who they tell stories about, X-Men Legacy is a great series.

Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard

Just finished this, and cannot say enough good things about it. The story of the so called Golden Age of Pirates is more interesting and fantastic than you would even think. The book follows the lives of three of the most successful and famous pirates of the era and the man who ended up taking them down.

The book clearly has influenced both Black Sails on STARS and the John Malkovich starring Crossbones, but I would say in some ways maybe a better story than either.

Heavy Weather by Jim Butcher

I think I might have read this, but I don’t know. And I am going to go see him speak this fall at the GenCon Writer’s Symposium, figured I should have read at least one of his books.

Luke McCullough

Luke was born in a small town in western OR, and by the time he graduated high school had moved around enough to never feel like his identity was tied to anyone place. After college in PA, he worked a for a big company outside Seattle, WA doing small parts of interesting projects. And now is employed doing interesting things for a smaller company based in NY, NY. He currently lives in Arlington, MA. Reading and writing have been a passion his entire life, though it has only been more recently that writing has been a focus for him.