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Filling the gap between the X-Men: First
Class miniseries and next month's ongoing title, we have
the X-Men: First Class Special.
At first glance, this issue is nothing
more than First Class #9. But in fact, that's
not entirely fair. On this collection of short
stories, writer Jeff Parker is joined by a range of
different artists. There's also a subtle difference in
tone. This issue doesn't feel like an ersatz Marvel
Adventures title in quite the same way as First Class
did - perhaps inevitable, when you've got a story drawn by
the spiky Kevin Nowlan, and another where Nick Dragotta and
Mike Allred are being vaguely psychedelic.
Nowlan's story, "The Museum of Oddities",
is a fairly standard First Class piece - the X-Men
investigate something, there's a mutant angle to it, and
everything works out happily in the end. It's only
five pages, and it's straightforward, but Nowlan's art sells
it.
"The Soul of a Poet" is a stranger
proposition, as it attempts to update Bernard the Poet.
Bernard appeared in a handful of issues in the 1960s, rarely
interacting with the team, but readers of a certain age tend
to remember him because, as a character with a name, he got
listed in the X-Men Index. Since the beat
poetry scene was on its last legs even when Lee and Kirby
created the character, Bernard takes an awful lot of
updating, and becomes a pretentious spoken word artist.
The story also gives Bernard mutant
powers, in a way that's rather hard to square with any of
his original appearances. The relationship between
First Class and established continuity has always been a
little strained, but this really is pushing it. (And
since the final story has a present-day framing sequence,
there's a real sense of the book having its cake and eating
it.) But it's a fun little story, and Dragotta and
Allred work wonders with the visuals.
"A Girl and her Dragon" attempts to gives
us a relationship between Marvel Girl and, of all things,
Dragon Man. This doesn't really work. It feels
like an awkward exercise in manufacturing a parallel with
Kitty and Lockheed, for no obvious purpose. But it's
got art by Paul Smith, which is always something.
Colleen Coover also contributes art for
three single-page comedy strips, which are very cute, but to
be honest, probably not quite as funny as they really need
to be.
On the whole, though, it's a decent
package, and an encouraging sign that First Class is
going to broaden out from its rather restrictive format,
without losing sight of its broad appeal.
Rating: B+
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