We join Mulder and Scully as they investigate the frightening world of the high school reunion, thankfully this time without any flying cows. Read after the jump four our recap of The X-Files Annual 2015.
This year’s annual contains just one story, “Most Likely To…”, and it opens on a scene those of us who read fanfic are intimately familiar with; Mulder and Scully arriving at a high school reunion. Scully’s dress is worth of a mention here because, simply, wow. Somebody was dressing to impress!
We quickly learn that this high school reunion is not one that either of them have been invited to. Mulder is going undercover to investigate the disappearance of a student named Colin Matthews. Colin vanished when spending the night in a supposedly haunted house with two classmates, Tristan and Kelly, twenty years previously. The pair have gone on to marry and now have their own TV show: Ghost Encounter Survivors that continues to trade off the story of the missing teenager.
This is a classic X-File with an interesting ending that I didn’t see coming. Mulder and Scully are well written and their characterization is spot on. Both get some great dialogue, I particularly enjoyed Scully’s remark that Mulder’s fake glasses wouldn’t “keep [her] from socking [him] if this turns sideways” in response to his instruction that she should “act as infatuated with [him] as [she] can”. Her threat to sleep in the car to stop him ditching her and causing more trouble made me laugh as well.
There are a few mistakes that I noticed throughout the issue. The timestamp sets the reunion in Summer 1999 yet it is suggested (and confirmed on the back cover blurb) that Mulder is investigating this case because this is the anniversary of Samantha’s disappearance, although we know she was abducted in November. We also see Scully wearing an adorable t-shirt and shorts outfit to bed; what happened to the collection of silk pajamas in various colors?!
Oh, and can we just talk about the covers for a moment? Rather than being fully illustrated the regular cover is more a photo manipulation of Mulder and Scully’s high school yearbook entries that features photos of a much younger David and Gillian. There’s a stunning amount of detail to find from their choice of quotes to Mulder’s list of activities to the other objects scattered around. The subscription photo cover is pretty funny too, using a photo of suburban Mulder and Scully from “Arcadia” and captioning it “Best Dressed: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully”.
I really loved this year's annual and felt it was a great monster-of-the-week story that allowed both characters to shine. I hope we see more from writer Michael Raicht and artist Kevin VanHook who did a fantastic job of capturing our favorite agents and making them believable - even in a cocktail dress!