The other X-book for the week is X-Men: First Class #4, part of an eight-issue miniseries telling additional stories about the X-Men from the 1960s.  So far these have all been single issue stories, which is very unusual these days.  There's no story arc whatsoever.

In fact, this turns out to be a refreshing change.  First Class is a book with no pretensions to be anything more than it is - a straightforward, old school superhero book that tells a story and does it clearly, without trying to be edgy or innovative just for the sake of it.  I wouldn't want every X-Men comic to be like this, but it's nice to have one that takes this tack.

This issue, for example, Cyclops discovers that he's now seeing demons through his visor thanks to his last team-up with Doctor Strange (which was in X-Men #33, if you're wondering).  So the X-Men team up with Doctor Strange to fight said demon and send it back home.  And that's basically it.  It's remarkably rare to see a superhero comic doing something so straightforward and yet still do it quite well.  There's a certain charm in the way Jeff Parker scripts the characters, and while Roger Cruz will never be an award-winning artist, he's perfectly up to the task here.

Alright, there's scope for nitpicking.  The continuity is, er, shaky.  Initially this book seemed to be in a little world of its own, but it's making increasingly blatant bids for canonicity - after all, this issue, the plot hinges on an earlier story from the original sixties run.  But if it's after X-Men #33 then it must be after the Factor Three arc, in which case the X-Men should have dumped the black and yellow outfits for solo costumes by this time.  And why are they acting like they've never been in Greenwich Village before?  That's where the Coffee-a-Go-Go was.  It was their standard hangout, starting in issue #7.

(Younger readers unfamiliar with the back issues may not be aware of the Coffee-a-Go-Go.  Marvel would probably prefer to keep it that way.  Imagine the X-Men as teenagers in suits, listening to jazz and watching beat poetry.  It's fabulous.)

Still, in order for this sort of thing to be an issue, you need to know the continuity fairly well - and most readers won't.  Mind you, if you're taking that line, I suppose it casts doubt on the wisdom of doing an explicit sequel to a story published in 1967.  Even so, it's a minor point, because these are still self-contained stories and, for all that it's a Silver Age implant book, the continuity is a side issue.

A bigger complaint would be that the plot is on the slight side, even for a straightforward superhero story.  But I'm prepared to be indulgent on a book like this, and at least there's an amusing old-school logic to the idea of Cyclops' ruby visor getting screwed up by Cyttorak's magic rubies.  This is one of the more entertaining books of each month, simply because it's not ashamed to just tell its story and do it straight.

Rating: B

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