Written by Brian Wood
Penciled by Oliver Copiel
Inked by Mark Morales and Oliver Copiel
Colors by Laura Martin
I really like the X-Men. They were my favorite book back in
the Claremont/Byrne days. Back in the 80’s, they rocked the comics world like
nothing else. But I grew disillusioned with the X books when they became too
big for their breeches. New Mutants? Ok. Excalibur? Maybe. X-Factor, X-Force,
Exiles, X-this and X-that. Too much. Since then, I’ve been mostly away from X
books. But I have been looking at the new Marvel NOW books and picking up some
#1 issues to see how they look.
And with X-Men #1, it looks like we will have the X-Women
take the stage, which is pretty cool. Perhaps there will be a new Marvel issue
that doesn’t have Wolverine in it. On the cover we see Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Rachel
Summers, Rouge, Storm and Psylock; some of the most bad ass women mutants. And Brian
Wood starts the story off with some “before time things started going bad”
trope. By the second page, we learn Jubilee has a baby in tow and is trying to
get to upstate New York to be with her fellow X-Men.
The comic book isn’t bad, but it’s not really great either.
The bad guy apparently is someone named John Sublime, who I never heard of. But
the X-Men seem to take him seriously. But again, the problem seems to be all
the backstory baggage. With Marvel NOW, how much is brand new and how much is
from the previous stories? That’s the biggest problem with this book, and
comics in general. How much knowledge and backstory do you need to understand and
enjoy the comic?
I did like the art from Oliver Copiel. Unlike the big
boobed, scantally clad women from the 90’s that I remember and left behind,
these X-Women are pretty demure. And the action is well done. The train crash
would normally by a double-page, hyper-kinetic, super-detailed explosion with
bodies and flames everywhere. But again, that would have been in a comic from
the 90’s. Instead, we have a really cool sequence over a couple pages showing
the lead up and crash in a small quarter panel. Nice.
Would I add this in a library collection? Perhaps. But with
it being a book with baggage, patrons might ask for collections of back stories
to fill in the gaps. That’s why I try and stay away from books like this that
are part of a huge continuity for our collection. Instead I like relying on
really good, self-contained story arcs or stand alone books.
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