Written by: Jed MacKay
Art by: Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer
Colors by: Marte Gracia
Letters by: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Cover art by: Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Marte Gracia
Cover price: $5.99
Release date: July 10, 2024
X-Men #1, by Marvel on 7/10/24, begins a new era for the X-Men when Cyclops and his team take up residence in abandoned Sentinel factor in Alaska.
Is X-Men #1 Good?
Much has been made in online discourse and comics journalism about Marvel’s decision to end the Krakoan era in favor of a back-to-basics approach to the X-Titles. Optimistically dubbed the “From The Ashes” era, new X-Title steward Tom Brevoort has the unenviable task of recasting the creative teams, reworking the titles, and forging a new path that puts the increasingly unpopular Krakoan phase of Mutant history in the rearview mirror.
Jed MacKay has the equally unenviable task of being the first gladiator to step into the lion’s den with artist Ryan Stegman, so here we are with (the adjective-less) X-Men #1. Does the debut issue of the first of many titles make a bold statement about the future of mutants at Marvel? Let’s find out.
We begin with Police Chief Paula Robbins of Merle, Alaska pulling up to the metal doors of a manufacturing facility 20 minutes outside of town. Chief Robbins knocks on the door in anticipation of a meeting for a guided tour with Scott Summers aka Cyclops. Unfortunately, Cyclops is out on a mission with the fighting members of his team, so Hank McCoy, aka Beast, steps in to give Chief Robbins the meet-and-greet to set her mind at ease about her new mutant neighbors.
MacKay opts for the quiet, ease-readers-in approach by introducing Chief Robbins as the audience surrogate to ask questions, react to her surroundings, and receive gobs of exposition about the X-Men and their new status quo. Does Chief Robbins accomplish all of that and more? Yes, but readers hoping the series would start with a bang will be left wanting.
Now we get to see the team in action and a sense of their broader purpose – find and rescue mutants. Unfortunately, the rescue sequence is where we see the cracks in the foundation of MacKay’s X-debut. Quentin Quire, aka Kid Omega’s, irritating personality and Twitter-speak dialog are cranked up to obnoxious levels (Even Magneto will later wonder when Quentin will be killed off). Magik and Juggernaut act like immature, competitive siblings with cranked-down intellects. Further, the interactions between the characters turn jokey in what should be high-tension, high-pressure moments, echoing the flat humor of the MCU in Phase 4.
MacKay’s high pace comes at the expense of narrative flow, so you see one panel jump to the next and the next with jarring rapidity during the rescue. Imagine a grand, epic action sequence spliced down into a 60-second TikTok video. Yes, page space should be used efficiently to keep the pacing up, but if there’s not enough room to give readers the full sequence because several pages are used for Chief Robbins’s neighbor tour, harder choices need to be made.
The issue turns back to Chief Robbins’s tour where we learn that the factory’s first closure created hard feelings among the townsfolk of Merle. Beast lends a supportive ear, but his empathy is tempered by the fact that the factory was used to manufacture mutant-killing sentinels. The tour concludes with a less-than-friendly introduction to Magneto, who makes it very clear that the X-Men are good neighbors as long as they’re left alone. Interference will be responded to… harshly.
MacKay’s interaction with Chief Robbins and Magneto has the desired effect of communicating that the mutants are not safe to fool with. But in a strange turnaround, the interaction negates MacKay’s purpose for Chief Robbins’s visit in the first place. What was the goal of Scott’s invitation to have the Chief come out to the factory? If it was to set her mind at ease, it failed. After the rescue mission, Scott and Beast catch each other up, and they both know Magneto will leave a sour taste, so why bother at all? Why not send Scott into town to gladhand and control the sentiment? You can introduce an audience surrogate to deliver a lot of information in a way that makes sense for the story, but it still has to make sense of the story.
The issue switches back to the rescue where we get to the meat and potatoes of what’s to come, two-thirds of the way through the issue. The former Orchis agents, now named the “Fourth School,” are formed to reach the next stage of human evolution by combining humanity, A.I., and mutant components. Psylocke frees Wolverine from an operating room where his organs have been harvested, regrown, and harvested again (I think. More on that in the art section). Finally, Quentin detects the other mutants and is shocked to learn that they’re Fourth School adults who’ve had their latent mutant genes activated. From the shadows, we see a mysterious mother/daughter duo assessing the battle for their organization which they call 3K.
When the fight tilts in the X-Men’s direction, 3K teleports away with the adult mutants/Fourth School acolytes. The issue concludes with Wolverine taking a long walk, Beast and Cyclops debriefing each other, and more intimidation for the folks of Merle.
What’s great about X-Men #1? Overall, MacKay gets the job done by establishing the new status quo, using action to demonstrate the team’s mission statement, and (briefly) introducing the villain threat to come. All the minimum checkboxes are ticked.
What’s not so great about X-Men #1? This issue is one of the rarer examples of the negatives mostly boiling down to the intangibles.
Why did Scott invite Chief Robbins to the base to ease concerns, knowing he might not be around to set the tone and keep less hospitable mutants from scuttling the meeting? Scott is supposed to be the best strategic thinker among the X-Men. Beast explicitly makes that observation in this issue, so half of this issue plays as an out-of-character misstep.
The rock-paper-scissors argument between Magik and Juggernaut when the rescue mission starts is idiotic, unfunny, and painfully out-of-character for both.
Quentin Quire is the type of character you can only tolerate in small doses. Keeping him on as a regular, vocal team member is another misstep. You know you’ve chosen poorly when Magneto says (paraphrasing), “Ugh, not this guy again.”
Last but not least, MacKay has a reputation for weak villains. Here, that weakness is on full display with an introduction barely more than two silhouettes briefly chatting from a shadowed location. We don’t know who they are, what they want, or what motivates them. At best, we know 3K has advanced tech at their disposal which activates mutant powers in adults. If that’s supposed to be a big deal, it doesn’t come across on the page.
For readers who might think, “Give it a chance. You have to let the story develop.” No, that time is over for Marvel and DC. If Marvel is charging $5.99 (Thanks, Dan Buckley) for a first issue, high expectations should be expected, met, and exceeded to keep readers coming back. Comics are not a charity. There are no participation trophies (except for the Eisners, apparently). It’s on Marvel to earn every dollar, so the first issue needs to hit and hit hard.
How’s the Art? Stegman, Mayer, and Gracia deserve credit for a first issue that’s bright, colorful, vibrant, and energetic. However, much like the writing, the cracks are evident. For example…
Wolverine’s organ harvesting scene mentioned above is a guess because the coloring is so off, and the shape of things plopping into containers is so irregular, that you don’t know what you’re looking at. It’s unclear if the flaw lies in the coloring, the pencils, or both.
Next, the character designs are strangely uneven. Sometimes Chief Robbins’s face waffles between fully fleshed out to Manga cartoonish-ness on the same page.
As noted earlier, the rescue sequence tries to do too much with not enough space. Stegman has to make the flow work, but it doesn’t always. When Quentin and Temper take on a sentinel, Juggernaut saves them from being squashed by the giant robot’s hand. Unless the review copy we received from Marvel is an out-of-order misprint, that sequence of panels doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Overall, the art is bright and eye-catching, but your visual input is regularly tripped up by little things meant to look cool but doesn’t make any sense i.e. How does Cyclops’s force blast ricochet off brick walls and multiple henchmen?
For the average, casual reader, X-Men #1 is perfectly okay if you don’t think about it too much. It’s fine but flawed and forgettable.
For everyone else hoping the X-Men would get off that damned orgy island and back to superhero basics, you get a weirdly paced plot, uneven art, developments and character work that are either off-putting or don’t make sense, and an exasperatingly weak villain.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Final Thoughts
X-Men #1 reforms the team on a base in Alaska to begin their new mission of rescuing mutants held by the remnants of Orchis and A.I.M. The change of venue away from Krakoa is a welcome relief, but the oddly paced plot, uneven art, head-scratching character choices, and weak villain will either put you off or make you forget you ever read it. X-Men #1 is not the strong start we hoped for in the new “From The Ashes” era.
6/10
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