X-Men: First Class #12 is a very odd story.  Angel goes to South America to look for his beloved aunt, finds a hidden civilisation, and decides to stay for a bit because he's accepted there.  And, er, that's about it.

It kind of looks like the first half of a two-part story.  Conventionally, part two would see Angel realising the importance of facing reality, and returning to join the team.  And indeed, he's not with the team on the cover of next issue.  But according to the solicitations, next issue is the X-Men and Machine Man, who isn't in this issue at all.  So I'm assuming this is supposed to be at least somewhat self-contained.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this story.  On one level, it grates on my inner continuity obsessive.  A central idea of the story is that the Angel feels at home in this hidden civilisation because they accept his appearance.  Xavier delivers a little speech about how the other X-Men can all pass for normal, but poor Warren is separated by the rest of humanity by his wings.

Er... what?  Since when?  The Silver Age stories always claimed, however implausibly, that Angel could simply strap down his wings under his clothes.  I don't recall it being an issue in First Class before now.  I suppose I could buy the idea of Angel wanting to live in a community where he can pick up girls more freely, but that's not the way it's presented here.  First Class has always played fast and loose with continuity, and I can live with such anomalies as Warren's parents knowing about the X-Men; but this doesn't even come across as consistent with First Class's own version of the character.

But aside from that, it's a bit of a non-story.  Warren goes to a mysterious place in South America in search of his missing aunt, finds her without much difficulty, and encounters no significant threat at all.  Not exactly dramatic, is it?

The most memorable thing about the story, in fact, is that Roger Cruz gets to draw a couple of splash pages of landscapes, and does a pretty impressive job with them.  If you remember Cruz mainly as a Joe Madureira clone in the late nineties, then his work on this series is probably a lot better than you're expecting.

Pretty pictures of mountains, however, don't alter the fact that the story doesn't work for me.

Rating: C

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