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 X-MEN:
DEADLY GENESIS is effectively the first chapter of
Ed Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men run, introducing
Vulcan and attempting the massive retcon of inserting
four previously unmentioned X-Men into Giant-Size
X-Men #1. This ought to be a recipe for
continuity disaster, and god knows there's a lot of
tangled history in here. Somewhat against my
better judgment, though, I rather liked it - Brubaker
managed to sell me on his unlikely idea, and it embraced
the X-Men's history in a warm, cuddly way that most
books no longer attempt.
Reviews: #1 |#2
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#5 |
#6 |
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 X-MEN:
FAIRY TALES baffles the hell out of me. It's a
selection of fairy tales re-told with the X-Men in the
lead roles. Since the casting generally seems
completely arbitrary, or based on merely superficial
similarities, this doesn't actually say anything new
about the X-Men or about the fairy tales. It's
just a really bizarre gimmick. But having said
that, if you ignore the X-Men aspect and treat it as a
series of folk tale adaptations, it's often quite
successful. Artists like Kyle Baker and Bill
Sienkiewicz contribute, and their issues come off rather
well. There's a sequel next year, with other
Marvel characters, and while the gimmick is just plain
weird, the actual book could be good.
Reviews: #1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
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 X-MEN:
FIRST CLASS is a series of self-contained stories
set back in the Silver Age. Simple, unpretentious,
straightforward and content to be a superhero book where
heroes fight villains, it's a throwback to a simpler
age, albeit that it actually has very little in common
with the sort of X-Men stories that appeared in the
sixties. But this is the Silver Age the way it
should have been, given X-Men history as it tends to be
remembered, and it's good honest fun.
Reviews: #1 |
#2-3 |
#4 |
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 X-MEN:
PHOENIX - WARSONG is the notional sequel to last
year's Endsong miniseries, although in reality
it's the origin story of the Stepford Cuckoos.
Endsong was a surprisingly good book, in which
writer Greg Pak took a clumsy set-up and managed to get
a really good story out of it. Warsong is
just plain horrid, with ugly art from Tyler Kirkham, and
a plot that reads like it was created by a random fanfic
generator. The world does not need hordes of
genetically engineered Emma Frosts, and how anyone could
possibly have thought this was a good idea baffles me.
Fundamentally misconceived nonsense.
Reviews: #1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
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 X-MEN
& POWER PACK is another book that slips onto
this list by virtue of shipping its final issue in
January. The formula had Power Pack meeting a
different X-Man every issue - so for example, Cyclops
turns up and teaches little Alex a valuable lesson about
the responsibilities of leadership. Gurihiru's art
is delightful, and judged on its own terms - a kids book
using Power Pack as the entry point to show the fun side
of the Marvel Universe - it's a success.
Reviews:
#4 |
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 X-MEN/RUNAWAYS
was the Marvel contribution to Free Comic Book Day,
comprising an eleven-page team-up story and a bunch of
reprints. The theory is sound enough - hook them
with the X-Men, introduce them to the Runaways.
The problem is, it's no good - a random "heroes meet and
fight" piece which surely won't hook anyone, and seems
to have been thrown together to satisfy a remit on
rather short notice. A wasted opportunity.
Reviews: #1 |
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 X-MEN:
THE 198 is David Hine's other X-Men miniseries for
2006, in which the X-Men are marginalised while the
mutants camped out in the garden begin their feud with
O*N*E. It's not really successful, because it
wants to be a multi-layered, morally complex drama, but
ends up making O*N*E into such bastards that there's no
ambiguity at all, while the X-Men come across as
pathetically weak for standing around and letting it all
happen. Wonderful covers by Juan Doe, though.
Reviews: #1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
#5 |
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 X-MEN:
THE END - BOOK THREE was the concluding part of
Chris Claremont's trilogy tying up the X-Men his way.
Fittingly, the final issue of this series was the last
of his stories to ship after his health problems
intervened, and so if he never returns to the X-Men (as
opposed to the satellite books), this will stand as his
final word on the subject. Claremont's fans seem
to have loved it, which I suppose is the best test for a
book like this - after all, the point of the exercise is
just to show us how Chris Claremont would have ended the
series. For the rest of us, to be honest, it's
really best avoided. Claremont loses sight of the
central themes of the series - you know, human/mutant
relations and all that - and ends up doing a weird story
about the Shi'ar and the Phoenix where everyone suddenly
has moral revelations in the final chapter despite a
thundering lack of set-up. The finale has
seemingly nothing to do with the preceding seventeen
issues, and it's all terribly mawkish.
Reviews: #1
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#5 |
#6 |
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 X-MEN
UNLIMITED was cancelled in April with issue #14, but
nobody noticed. Seriously. They just stopped
soliciting it, and people cared so little about the book
that it just didn't register. That speaks volumes
about the level of interest among the completists who
are buying some of these satellite books, doesn't it?
The final issues have the usual selection of acceptable
but ultimately throwaway stories, and the book fizzled
out into oblivion.
Reviews:
#13 |
#14 |
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 And
right at the end of the alphabet,
X-STATIX
PRESENTS: DEAD GIRL saw Peter Milligan and Mike
Allred reuniting for what was actually more of a Dr
Strange series. An endearingly silly tale in which
minor Marvel heroes visit the afterlife, it lacks the
depth of the best X-Statix stories - where there
was always a point lurking behind the insanity - but it
still recaptured something of the spirit of that very
odd title, and provided plenty of demented
entertainment.
Reviews:
#1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
Finally, I should once again
mention the death
of Dave Cockrum, the artist who co-created many of 1975's
"new X-Men" and helped set the book on the course to massive
success. Everything you see here grows from those
mid-seventies stories, for better or worse. Cockrum's
contribution to the X-Men was as important as that of the
bigger name artists who followed him, if not more so, and
his character designs for the new X-Men were classics.
Just look at the dreary attempts to redesign Nightcrawler in
recent years and compare them to the elegant, striking
simplicity of Cockrum's original.
Next week, Uncanny X-Men
#482 continues the Shi'ar arc, and there's the second issue
of X-23: Target X. Oh, and if retailer reports
are reliable, look out for carnage on the west coast, where
something has gone
horribly, horribly wrong with the distribution of
Civil War #6.
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