MUTANT X #13 - September 1999

The Hunger

Credits: Ben Raab (writer), Mike Miller (penciler), Saleem Crawford (inker), Gina Going (colors), Chris Eliopoulos (letters)

Summary: In the past, Kitty hunts down Storm, who’s recently been turned into a vampire. She’s held in a castle, where Forge is already being kept for food by a group of vampires. Storm breaks free, taking Forge with her. Kitty soon locates Storm, and during their fight, Storm finally succumbs to her urges and sucks Kitty’s blood. Months later, Colossus accepts that Kitty is gone.

Continuity Notes: Havok is shown as a member of the X-Men when Kitty first joins, unlike the mainstream continuity.

Better Than X-Factor?: Say what you will about Ben Raab, but he never wrote anything as bad as Howard Mackie’s X-Factor. This is a fill-in issue dedicated to revealing the events that led to Storm becoming a vampire, even though we never actually see a vampire biting her. Raab assumes that the reader is already familiar with the Dracula issue of Uncanny X-Men, so the story begins with Storm fighting off her new urges as Kitty runs off to play the Van Helsing role. That’s an odd assumption to make, even if the Dracula issue has been reprinted a few times, but I guess it leaves the story room to explore new material. Unfortunately, none of the extra space is used to answer questions that need resolutions, like explaining how the X-Men already know Forge at this point, and who’s keeping him at this castle. Instead, the majority of the issue consists of decompressed scenes of Kitty chasing Storm, Storm dramatically bemoaning her fate, and Kitty fighting Storm. Not enough information about the new world is revealed, and when the story is judged on its own merits, it’s far too thin.