I probably shouldn't like X-Men: Deadly Genesis.  It's a difficult book to argue for, on a number of levels.

For one thing, it's a whacking great retcon which seems singularly unnecessary.  In 2006, was anyone really still clinging on for a resolution of the "Third Summers Brother" storyline - a storyline which consists of a single line of dialogue in a comic from thirteen years ago?

On top of that, we have a modern-day framing sequence with a distinctly ropey plot.  It's fair enough that Vulcan wants to make sure everyone knows what happened to him and his team, but his plan is decidedly ropey.  He seems to be satisfied with just provoking a load of explanation and flashbacks.  Of course, the focal point of this series was always going to be the history implants.  But is there really anything going on in the present day segments beyond Vulcan arbitrarily prompting people to explain the plot?

Complicating matters further, Ed Brubaker finds himself in the awkward position of having to work his story around Giant-Size X-Men #1.  He's kind of stuck with it, because it's the issue where all the new X-Men came in.  But despite its historical significance, it's really a bit silly.  It's the X-Men versus Krakoa the Living Island, after all.  Brubaker does his best to try and improve Krakoa in this series, but really, the concept is so dumb that there's not much to be done with it.

And yet.  Perhaps it's the continuity-obsessed fanboy in me, but I find myself rather enjoying this.  Creators always face a big uphill struggle when it comes to selling me a sweeping piece of revisionism.  The usual approach in Marvel lately is just to ignore the details and bulldozer through regardless, which only serves to annoy people (since, after all, it's the writers who brought up the past continuity in the first place).  Brubaker has actually put some effort into building this up over a period of months so that it seems to work.  It's a massively sweeping change to the plot of Giant-Size X-Men #1, but he's persuaded me.  I suppose to that extent it's an advantage that nobody was particularly in love with the original plot in the first place.

Against the odds, the creators have managed to make this unlikely insertion feel like a part of the established mythos.  It seems to fit, and that's a massively underrated virtue these days.  A convincing world is full of details that fit together, not random stories that clash awkwardly.

Now, having said all that, I realise that this is an extremely fannish reason to like a series, and that the reasons I like it will probably be lost on any more casual reader.  They'll be stuck with a series that exists to revise history, and which introduces a rather one-dimensional villain in a shaky plot.  God knows Vulcan needs a bit of psychological fleshing out if he's really going to carry another major storyline, because he's little more than an angry prompting device here - save for the flashback scenes which show him as an enthusiastic X-Man who can't wait to prove himself.  There's a lot of work to be done to make the character into a compelling villain.

I recognise all these problems... and yet I still like the book, if only because it's trying, and succeeding, in areas which so many writers frustratingly ignore.  My head says it's seriously flawed, but my heart just refuses to listen.

Rating: B

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