And on to yet another miniseries, this time Ed Brubaker and Trevor Hairsine's X-Men: Deadly Genesis. This is commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Giant-Size X-Men #1.  The twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated by X-Men: Black Sun, so at least it's bound to be an improvement on that.

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that although this is a $3.99 book, you're actually getting something for your extra money besides a shiny cover.  The lead story is 28 pages, and the back-up strip runs for another eight.  That's around 13 more story pages than the average Marvel comic, so the price hike is justified for a change.

The series starts by picking up on the point from the closing pages of House of M - what happened to all the energy taken away from the mutants?  To be honest, I don't entirely buy into that whole premise.  We're doing a storyline based in the Marvel Universe, massive reality warps are involved, and suddenly we're going to worry about the Law of Conservation of Energy?  Really?

Anyhow, logically or not, all that energy has certainly done... well, something... to a bunch of astronauts, one of whom has survived and returned to Earth.  It's basically a set-up issue, with the old faithful storyline of the X-Men detecting a powerful mutant, racing off to investigate, and meeting a villain who beats the crap out of them.  The big mystery here is the identity of the villain, and at this stage the hints about the X-Men's past are way too vague to do more than hazard a guess.  The promotional material would seem to suggest that it's Thunderbird, but I'm hoping that Brubaker has more originality than that - or, at least, a very good idea to back it up.  It's a very effective build-up, nonetheless.

Trevor Hairsine provides art on the lead story, which is something of a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it's certainly great to look at, and builds the atmosphere nicely.  The panel of the rock hand rising out of the ground is particularly good.  On the other hand, Hairsine comics have a dreadful track record of delay, which makes me very wary about seeing his name attached to a project.  Hopefully he'll prove me wrong, because the quality of the actual work is high, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that his involvement guarantees painfully long delays on future issues.

The back-up strip introduces Petra, a new mutant character who obviously figures into the main plot somewhere, although it's not clear how.  This is basically an off-the-peg origin story (plucky runaway), which gets the character up and running without really making her stand out from the crowd.  Still, she seems like a perfectly decent supporting character, which is what this story appears to call for.  And Pete Woods provides excellent artwork, helped by a very strong colouring job by Brad Anderson.

All told, a very promising start to the series.

Rating: A-

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