Broad strokes here are Madrox, Longshot, M, and Strong Guy have gone to the bad dude's warehouse where they think Armando/Darwin is, only to be blown up. Terry and Rictor are having a lengthy conversation with Val Cooper about O.N.E. and bringing the team in. Madrox's field team gets away, considerably unscathed, and then come across some of the dude's goons. And Terry's water breaks. Uh-oh.

The opening sequence of Madrox and his team going into the warehouse is the same as last issue's, only this time, Longshot, Madrox and Strong Guy fall through the floor, leaving M up top by herself. When the warehouse blows, the three underground are fine and M loses her clothes. It's funny though. Strong Guy gets to give some shit to Longshot, saying that his powers work in a way that even if he at one second looks like a complete and utter fuck-up, in the next he can say I meant to do that. It's awesome. Of course, he and M are still making googly eyes at each other, and Madrox has a little more trouble with his dupes.

And that's one of the best moments in the book. He makes a dupe when he falls, and makes that dupe give up his shirt to M even though he likes seeing her awesome rocking naked body. The dupe doesn't want to follow commands. When the team is seized upon by the bad guy's goons, they take them down, and Madrox tries to interrogate one of them by threatening to make a dupe inside the guy's head (his hand is in his mouth, if the hand and mouth collide a dupe will appear where the hand is).

The dude doesn't talk, so another of Madrox's dupes makes that happen. And it's gross and bloody. Jamie doesn't want to bring that dupe inside of him, either of them, because one is covered in blood and the other has homicidal rage. It's crazy. But it works. It's showing the leader of the team losing his cool, and he needs to find a way to control the dupes better because it keeps getting worse. That's called characterization.

And the final pages have two big reveals. The bad guy has made an army of Darwins, and Terry's water breaks. Big uh-oh for next issue on both counts.

Now, the other thing I like besides the fact that Peter David has re-bred my confidence in this book is Valentine De Landro. I hope that he stays onto the book for a long time. He's gotten so much better over time that's it remarkable. Not only that, but the fact that he draws the characters the way they're supposed to be (Guido gets bigger when he sucks in energy, Longshot has four fingers on each hand, Madrox has an M tattoo over his right eye) that you know that the characters are still steeped in recent or altogether history. So it makes me a happy camper and will keep me reading for another couple months.