X-Men #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Illustrator: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colorist: Marte Gracia
Publisher: Marvel (July 2024)
Spoilers Ahead
You can't talk about the new X-Men without talking about the old X-Men. "Old" being a relative term, as the so-called Krakoa era of the team just recently wrapped up back in June with X-Men #35 or, according to Marvel's creative math, Uncanny X-Men #700. But old is, I think, an apt descriptor as the Krakoa era had long outlived its welcome. I guess I was in the minority of fandom when Jonathan Hickman's 2019 relaunch of the brand began with Dawn of X, because I really was neither optimistic nor hopeful about it. As I mentioned in my review of Wolverine: Deep Cut #1, I'm not an X-Men aficionado by any stretch of the imagination. I like the look and premise of the X-Men from the '90s when everything revolved around Jim Lee's designs; a school where young mutants learn to use their powers to better humanity, led by a team of heroes who protect a world that hates and fears them. Clean. Simple. And universally relatable in its messaging. Dawn of X was none of that, a strange hodgepodge of stale sci-fi cliches all guided by Hickman at his most self-indulgent and nauseating. No one can die! The X-Men live on an island utopia! All of the mutants are friends now! And on and on and on.
In fairness, the concept, even if it wasn't something I was interested in from the start, was at its best in Hickman's hands. Once he was apparently ousted from the project, the writers who remained took something that already sucked and made it a thousand times worse. Sales tanked. And here we are with Disney anxious to return the franchise to relevancy with projects like its X-Men '97 cartoon and the impending introduction of mutants into the MCU when Deadpool & Wolverine comes to theaters later this month. The comics, clearly, had to get back into shape and be ready for primetime. Longtime Marvel editor Tom Brevoort was pulled in from his usual position helming the Avengers line to take over the mess that outgoing X-editor Jordan White was leaving behind. An unenviable task, to be sure, but after allegedly being turned down by multiple creators who weren't interested in taking on the X-Men, Brevoort finally settled on the talent that would spearhead what Marvel is calling From the Ashes. First up to the plate is Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman's X-Men, and it's a frustrating effort that isn't likely to fully please fans who wanted a return to something more familiar from the franchise.
From the Ashes is promising multiple takes on the X-Men in something of an "everything and the kitchen sink" take. Basically, the three core X titles (adjectiveless, Uncanny, and Exceptional) will each have a different flavor that allows the writers to carve their own niche out as the X-Men try to figure out their place in the world now that they've been expelled from New Krakoa (which is it's own crazy thing that I'm not going to delve much into here). X-Men is pulling a page from the team's days in Australia, stationed in the middle of nowhere and going on missions. Rather than the Outback, this squad is taking up residence in an old Sentinel factory outside of Merle, Alaska. The story picks up with the team already calling the facility home, and local police chief Paula Robbins making a house call to get to know the town's new mutant neighbors. We don't know what the conflict was that brought the X-Men to Merle, but apparently the town "owes" them for their actions, which is why the team is being allowed to set up shop in the now-abandoned factory (which MacKay creatively has dubbed The Factory). As Beast plays tour guide for Chief Robbins, Cyclops is out in the field on a mission to rescue Wolverine from a cell of Orchis agents called the Fourth School. This remnant is convinced that it will be replacing humans, mutants, and AI as the dominant species on the planet.
Now, for those of you who suffered through Krakoa, hearing the name Orchis is not likely to make you very happy. Yes, it seems that although Krakoa is done as an era, its concepts are not going away, at least not entirely. For me, as a relative newcomer whose Krakoa knowledge is limited, I found Orchis off-putting for a different reason—I don't really have a clue who the hell these people are. I get they're bad guys, but that's about all I know. Their designs don't do much to make them look like anything more than A.I.M. agents in costumes dyed red. If this is supposed to be a fresh jumping on point for readers, MacKay fails at making things new-reader friendly. I know that there will be fans carrying over from the Krakoa era, but given how sales imploded towards the end, I'm assuming Marvel was hoping lapsed readers will be coming back alongside new ones with From the Ashes. I would've stayed away from anything Krakoa to start, or at least made any returning concepts easy to grasp, so that everyone could be on the same page.
The new X-Men roster (in this series) consists of a field team and a base team. Cyclops, Psylocke, Juggernaut, Kid Omega, Magik, and Temper (who I've never heard of) are the field team. Beast, Xorn (good lord, why), and Glob (along with one more member, who I'll get to) are the base team. Beast was apparently a character who got massively screwed over in terms of his characterization during the Krakoa era, but he's notably like his classic self in this issue (right down to the dark patches of fur around his eyes). He also alludes to not having been a part of what happened on Krakoa, suggesting that perhaps that unrecognizable version of himself during that period was some kind of fake. God, but if only they took that approach to the entire Krakoa era! The X-office did such harm to the entirety of the X-Men cast throughout that run that many felt the only way to really move on from Krakoa was to have a Dallas-esque Bobby Ewing scene where all of the character damage was washed away with an "it was all a dream" reset. Would that have been great storytelling? Probably not, but it would have at least graciously wiped the slate clean for this reboot. Instead, this proverbial Krakoan monkey will apparently be clinging to the back of every single series in From the Ashes.
There's one last noteworthy character who is part of the base team, which is Magneto, who now goes by "Max" for some reason (edit: I searched this and see that this is Erik's real name, adding to his growing list of true names. Sigh...). Eye-rolling new moniker aside, Magneto now wears a red and purple leisure suit and sits in a floating throne that is clearly meant to evoke the sight of Charles Xavier in his wheelchair. While Beast spends the bulk of his time with Chief Robbins trying to assuage her fears, Magneto is all too happy to play into them and loom as a threat over Merle during his introduction. Magneto insists that his Children of the Atom will be allowed to live and flourish in their new home, leaving the unspoken threat in the air of "or else" to linger darkly. Magneto should always be menacing as far as I'm concerned, even when he's on the side of the angels, so that tracked. But this Professor M thing that MacKay is setting up fell flat. It really just left me with questions more than anything. Why is he floating around on a throne? Can Magneto not walk now? Is that a Krakoa thing? And if it is, why isn't it being explained for new readers?
I'm also not thrilled with Juggernaut as a good guy. I know it's been done before, but just like Magneto, I prefer these characters as antagonists to the X-Men. They don't have to be full blown enemies, especially Magneto with his extraordinarily convoluted past with the team flip flopping between foe and friend, but I think that the average fan knows them as bad guys. I'm going to paraphrase Jeph Loeb from an old Wizard magazine issue. It was around the time that he was reintroducing Supergirl with Michael Turner during his Superman/Batman run. Loeb said he was at an amusement park with DC characters and that on the walls, you could see various heroes with a little biography telling people their basic origins. When he got to Supergirl's, it said something about angels and a protoplasmic shape-shifter (this was during the Peter David days on the character), and he immediately started to tune out. Loeb said that for most folks, Supergirl is Superman's cousin, or maybe even his little sister, but regardless, it was a simple, clean origin that was easy to relay. Loeb then recited the old The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance quote of how if the truth becomes legend, then you print the legend to explain how Supergirl (and by extension, I feel, most superheroes) should be handled, That's exactly what DC did by letting him reboot Supergirl, which was widely embraced by fans. Marvel needs to do something similar with the X-Men, and this ain't it.
Jed MacKay's name is on quite a few different series at Marvel, including The Avengers, but I have to admit I don't really know anything about him. Nothing he's written has gotten me interested in reading, so when he was announced for X-Men it didn't pique my interest in the slightest. I simply hoped he'd help right the ship, so to speak. MacKay sees this squad of X-Men as scavenger refugees trying to carve out their place in the world post-Krakoa. I think the problem with calling them refugees is that my mind conjures up vastly different images than MacKay's apparently does when it comes to what a refugee is and represents. The extraneous nonsense world that is New Krakoa becoming inaccessible to the X-Men is hardly the equivalent of someone escaping a war-torn nation or fleeing persecution, so I don't know that it's the greatest parallel to make.
In terms of MacKay's character work and plotting, I wasn't blown away, nor was I unimpressed. Sadly, of all the things to emulate from the MCU, MacKay has chosen to embrace the try-hard, quirky humor that has infected virtually every Marvel cinematic production. Magik and Juggernaut bicker like children, Quentin screeches expletives and argues with Temper, and Magneto jokes that he hopes Quentin dies soon on a mission. I can't stress enough how this sort of Millennial/Gen Z-style humor absolutely scuttles the stakes in any story it seeps into. If the characters are going to treat the story like a joke, then why shouldn't the reader follow suit? Yes, more often than not the heroes come out on top, but all of the drama, all of the tension, and all of the passion gets sucked right out of the pages when everyone is portrayed as a half-assed version of Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark. It's okay to inject some levity here and there, of course, but there's a time and place, and MacKay doesn't find that balance here. I'll give him credit for a strong piece of body horror where Wolverine's organs seem to be getting harvested from him while he's still conscious, but it's a fleeting moment. There's also a gimmick at the end with a "bonus scene" that's only available by scanning a QR code. I have no idea what the point of that was, and I also couldn't zoom in on the image, making the text impossible to read. Furthermore, I'm not sold on MacKay's naming conventions. The Grant Morisson/Hickman-esque nomenclature has never been a favorite of mine, and in X-Men #1 we're introduced to The Factory, a mystery group called "the 3K," the Fourth School... meh. I find it tiresome.
Ryan Stegman is handling art chores. For how long, who knows—as much as I adore his work, Stegman rarely sticks around on any series for more than a handful of issues, and only for limited consecutive stretches. I will be genuinely (albeit happily) surprised if we get six issues in a row of X-Men from this art team. My misgivings aside, I did enjoy the illustrations in this issue. Stegman's use of dynamic angles and perspective make even the dialogue-heavy scenes a joy to look at, and the action pieces are electric. There are some oddities when it comes to Stegman's figure work, however. Beast is weirdly thin, which is disappointing because Stegman nails every other aspect of his design, including the aforementioned dark fur around his yellow eyes. Beast is supposed to be wide-chested and imposing—perhaps this has something to do with his alluded to absence on Krakoa? Magneto also suffers a bit from an unusually youthful face in some panels. Perhaps the biggest problem comes down to the design of everyone's costumes. I don't like Cyclops' new uniform, and with the exception of Magik and Beast, everyone else is in a bland, unremarkable jumpsuit that is miles away from the iconic looks that these characters are known for. X-Men costumes have been hot garbage for years now, so it's not all too surprising, but I had hoped that along with the classic logo on the cover, Marvel would revert the characters to more classic costumes, too. I think of it this way: if Marvel can make money selling variant covers with the X-Men in their Byrne and Lee attire, why can't they also sell interiors with those same designs?
This all ties into a larger problem that Marvel has been entrenched in for far too long. Marvel Comics has had a terrible streak for years now of seeming to intentionally not give fans what they want. It's especially been an issue when it comes to creating synergy between the books and Marvel's cinematic output. No, I don't want the comics to mirror the MCU, per se, but I do think from a basic fan service standpoint that if someone comes away from something like X-Men '97, they should be able to enter a comic book shop and find the mainline series with a similar roster and setup. Instead, X-Men '97 fans will go into a shop and find multiple X-Men comics that have different takes with patchwork teams that kind of resemble the cartoon, but kind of also don't. What's the point of that? What's the point of following up years of divisive content during the Krakoa era with a relaunch that doesn't at least return the X-Men to a status quo that will be familiar to the overwhelming majority of fans and comic book readers? X-Men #1 doesn't land on its face, but it also doesn't come roaring out of the gates, either. There's too much lingering Krakoa baggage and not enough of the iconic trappings of the X-Men that fans have been starved of. I'm willing to stick around for the first arc, but this is a book, and indeed a publishing initiative, that is on a very short leash.
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