There's really not a lot to review, hence the "mini-review". Pixie Strikes Back is a four-issue TPB, collecting a spin-off miniseries published by Marvel. The story revolves around Pixie, and it serves to explain her background. Now, I'm not someone who generally reads X-Men, but I still found this an enjoyable review. The only real difference my lack of knowledge made was that many of the characters weren't known to me. I knew of X-23 from various places (mostly research), Mercury appears in Vol #3 of Deadpool (X Marks The Spot), Pixie from a Free Comic Book Day edition of an X-Men comic I have from a year or two ago, and that left Armor and Blindfold, two characters I know little about.
Art:
OK, the art is not the greatest. It's functional, yes, but it leads to at least one (possible!) misunderstanding towards the end, and it seems somewhat schizophrenic. To me, especially in the first half of the TPB, the art seems to flit between slightly "artistic" and then back to "comic" for no reason, which then disappears towards the end. One of the problems caused by this change is that many of the characters go from quite attractive to somewhat repulsive - but that's one thing I found with my previous encounter with Pixie. She can look either very nice or very poor.
The misunderstanding I noticed, or perhaps it isn't, is when Mercury pulls Armor through a pipe, causing Armor to land on her and if you look very closely, it looks like they're actually kissing, or very close to.
Story:
Well, it's not the strongest story I've read. A lot of it doesn't make too much sense until the last section, and even then it's very... unusual. I don't really want to spoil it, but I'll just say that it's not as coherent as it could be, and the ending doesn't seem to make that much sense. Of course, I could just be missing things as I always seem to do. It goes between Pixie's "dreamworld" and the actual world, but at the start it doesn't make it that clear - I was unsure if I was looking at flashbacks, dreams or otherwise.
One of the major strengths of this TPB is that it's funny. It's not side splitting funny in the way Deadpool can be, but it's still quite light hearted.
Overall:
It's readable, although I would recommend you wait for it to come down in price. You can get longer, and better, TPBs for a small increase in price. If you're a big X-Men fan then this is likely to be down your street, but if you're as unversed in X-Men as I am, then it might be worth putting off or getting second hand.
Favourite Panel:
Psylocke exclaiming "Bloody hell!" towards the end. Absolutely brilliant :)
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