BY Dave Whiteman
WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE READING!
Tag: X-Men
Comic Review – “HELLIONS” #1
REVIEW BY Dave Whiteman
“Bad is the new good!”
Comic Review – Giant Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Nightcrawler leads a team to explore the X-Men’s old home.
Comic Review – Cable #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
The grizzled veteran of a thousand future wars is back… as a happy-go-lucky teenager?!
Comic Review – Giant Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
To save Storm’s life, two different telepaths must join forces.
COMIC REVIEW – Wolverine #1
REVIEW BY Dave Whiteman
THE BEST IS BACK!
Comic Review – Fallen Angels #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Psylocke seeks a new enemy outside the paradise of Krakoa.
Comic Review – New Mutants #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
They’re older and wiser, yet still New Mutants.
COMIC REVIEW – Marvel Zombies: Resurrection #1
THE HORROR SMASH-HIT LIVES AGAIN!
REVIEW BY Dave Whiteman
Comic Review – Excalibur #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Mutants and Magic Mix, in this latest new X-Men series.
Comic Review – Marauders #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Kate Pryde sets sail for adventure, as the pirate queen of Mutantkind.
Comic Review – X-Men #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Marvel’s Merry Mutants Are Back!
COMIC PREVIEW – POWERS OF X #1
FEAR THE FUTURE! Superstar writer Jonathan Hickman (INFINTY, NEW AVENGERS, FF) continues his revolutionary new direction for the X-Men. Intertwining with HOUSE OF X, POWERS OF X reveals the secret past, present and future of mutantkind, changing the way you look at every X-Men story before and after. You do not want to miss the next seminal moment in the history of the X-Men!
COMIC PREVIEW – X-MEN #137 FACSIMILE EDITION
Jean Grey makes the ultimate sacrifice in the heartbreaking climax of the unforgettable Dark Phoenix Saga! Summoned by the alien Shi’ar to answer for the cosmic crimes of the Phoenix, Jean Grey must stand trial – by combat! The X-Men and the Shi’ar Imperial Guard do battle on the moon to decide Jean’s fate! But can she keep her dark side under control? Or will the Dark Phoenix rise against her friends? One of the greatest love stories in all of comics – Jean Grey and Scott Summers – ends in tragedy in an issue that shocked X-Men fans and sent ripples through the entire comics industry! It’s one of the all-time great Marvel comic books, boldly re-presented in its original form, ads and all! Reprinting X-MEN (1963) #137.
COMIC PREVIEW – HOUSE OF X #1
FACE THE FUTURE! Superstar writer Jonathan Hickman (SECRET WARS, AVENGERS, FANTASTIC FOUR) takes the reins of the X-Men universe! Since the release of Uncanny X-Men #1, there have been four seminal moments in the history of the X-Men. Giant-Sized X-Men. X-Men. Age of Apocalypse. New X-Men. Four iconic series that introduced a new era for Marvel’s mutants and revolutionized the X-Men. In House of X, Charles Xavier reveals his master plan for mutantkind…one that will bring mutants out of the shadow of mankind and into the light once more.
Comic Review – Age Of X-Man: The Amazing Nightcrawler #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
His name is Kurt Wagner, but he’s known as the Amazing Nightcrawler!
Comic Review – Age Of X-Man Alpha #1
REVIEW BY MATT MORRISON
Enter a brave new world, where everyone on Earth is a mutant!
Comic Review – The Hunt For Wolverine #1
Wolverine died, entombed in molten Adamantium.
The X-Men took his metal-encased body and hid it away, keeping its location secret.
But nothing stays buried.
It was only a matter of time.
With these words, Charles Soule opens the first chapter of The Hunt For Wolverine – what may well be the most eagerly anticipated Marvel Comics event of the year. (Well, apart from that movie that’s coming out later this week that you might have heard of, but we’ll stick to the books today, thank you.)
Logically, we all knew that James “Logan” Howlett would not stay dead forever. It’s the nature of comics. No matter how much the writers and editors may insist that dead is dead and that the torch has been passed and that a successor will be forever taking up their mentor’s name, it is as the introduction to this issue says – nothing stays buried and it was only a matter of time. To that end, The Hunt For Wolverine contains two stories, which begin the epic tale of just how Wolverine apparently came back from the dead and had to be hunted down afterward.
The first, Secrets And Lives, centers upon The Reavers – a group of mutant-hating mercenaries who went through a series of surgeries to become literal killing machines. The Reavers have fought the X-Men on more than one occasion and they fight them again here, after the gang of cyborgs somehow learn the location of Wolverine’s body and decide to indulge in a bit of grave-robbing.
This is the weaker of the two chapters by sheer virtue of the fact that The Reavers are hardly the most exciting group of antagonists. With code names like “Pretty Boy” and “Starshine” and costume designs that resemble rejected characters for the He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe toy line, The Reavers wouldn’t be memorable even if Charles Soule had bothered to introduced them individually. The artwork by David Marquez doesn’t make this action-based story any more exciting, somehow managing to be over-inked in a way that leaves everything cloaked in shadows while still leaving some of the defining pencils untouched!
The second story, Hunter’s Pryde, is a marked improvement. The action here focuses on Kitty Pryde as she seeks out various figures from around The Marvel Universe and asks for their help in trying to find the missing Wolverine. This leads to the formation of several groups, including various X-Men and Avengers.
Despite this chapter largely being expository and devoted to setting up the teams that will be the center of the action of the upcoming Hunt For Wolverine mini-series, Soule’s script is full of a wit and humor that the first chapter with The Reavers lacks. If nothing else, it’s funny watching Tony Stark’s reaction to finding out he wasn’t the first person Kitty approached and then seeing who she did go to first. The artwork by Paulo Siquiera is stronger for its clarity – a quality the fight scenes earlier in the book might have benefited from. Still, the artwork here is somewhat flat due to their being no action and most of the book being devoted to characters standing around and talking.
Ultimately, your enjoyment of The Hunt For Wolverine #1 will come down to how big of an X-Men fan you are. The chapter with The Reavers is largely pointless and only serves to balance the lack of action later in the book. The second chapter has some great character moments and conversations but it doesn’t really do anything but set the stage for the books that are coming out later where people will actually start hunting for Wolverine. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here that is absolutely necessary to the crossover but neither is it so pointless as to be worth skipping entirely.
6/10
The Hunt For Wolverine #1 releases on April 25, 2018!
Written by The Critic The Internet Deserves, but not the one it needs right now…. Matt Morrison. He’s a smart-ass guardian. A sarcastic protector. A Snark Knight.
Comic Review – X-Men: Red #1
It would be fair to say that I’ve never been the biggest fan of X-Men comics in general. I like the basic concept enough – superpowers as a metaphor for whatever oppressed minority group one might wish to champion as trying to make the world a better place while being hated and feared by the same people they’re trying to help. Unfortunately, that most universal of comic book concepts has frequently been forgotten by writers who became lost in the minutia of continuity. This made the X-Men books one of the hardest series for a new reader to get into for the longest time.
Thankfully, X-Men: Red #1 is both everything an X-Men comic should be and nothing like what most X-Men comics have been for the better part of the last three decades. If you’ve never picked up an X-Men book before or haven’t seen any of the X-Men movies, you’ll be able to grasp what it is about immediately from the opening sequence, in which a team of mutant heroes move to save a child from a lynch mob.
(Click To View The Full Image In Another Window.)
The rest of the issue focuses upon team leader – telepathic and telekinetic mutant Jean Grey – and her realization that she needs to do something more than just save lives and stop bank robberies in order to build a better world. What follows is a tremendous study of Jean’s character as well as a smooth explanation on the current status of mutants in the Marvel Universe.
Writer Tom Taylor manages this exposition with surprising efficiency. Many comic writers go into full-on professor lecture-mode when attempting to develop their world. Taylor avoids this with a generous amount of humor sprinkled among his factoids, tricking the reader into learning even as they are laughing. This is par for the course for Taylor, whose work on All-New Wolverine has turned that series into one of Marvel Comics’ most underrated treasures. And yes – he’s the one responsible for creating a tween girl clone of Wolverine called The Honey Badger. If that doesn’t make you smile a little bit, you might want to skip this book, though there is plenty of high drama and action to go along with the comedy.
Artist Mahmud Asra does a fantastic job capturing the essence of Taylor’s scripts. The action sequences are well-blocked and the characters all have distinctive designs with practical costumes – no improbable high-heels for the ladies on this team! There are a few minor glitches here and there – a scene where the perspective seems somewhat off or a panel where a character’s stress lines are so thick they look more like wrinkles. Thankfully, these moments are few and far between and the colors by Ive Svorcina are nice and vivid.
Bottom Line; If you’ve been avoiding X-Men for fear of it being too much work to get into, X-Men: Red #1 is your perfect entry point into one of Marvel Comics’ most epic legacies.
9/10.
Written by The Critic The Internet Deserves, but not the one it needs right now…. Matt Morrison. He’s a smart-ass guardian. A sarcastic protector. A Snark Knight.
Comic Review – Rogue & Gambit #1
She was a runaway who nearly killed her first sweetheart with a kiss.
He was abandoned as a baby for his black and red eyes.
She fell in with a group of mutant terrorists who offered her the closest thing to a loving home she’d ever had.
He was raised by the Thieves Guild of New Orleans and was a member in good standing until a duel forced him into exile.
She draws the energy out of people.
He sends energy out of himself.
Both outlaws. Both mutants. They were trouble enough alone but being together made things less troublesome. Well, most of the time…
Anna Marie a.k.a. Rogue is content to leave the past in the past. Her focus is on the future now that she’s leading an Avengers team. That, the state of Mutantkind and the recent redevelopment of her inability to control her powers when she touches people has put more than enough on her plate without Remy “Gambit” LeBeau coming back into her life wanting to rekindle their romance.
Okay. Technically he -said- he just wanted to get dinner. But it never wound up being just dinner with them. The point is that Rogue wants to eliminate all the complications from her life and there’s no way to describe the relationship between her and Remy without the phrase “It’s Complicated.”
Unfortunately, Rogue’s building a simpler life for herself will have to wait. When the X-Men learn of mutants disappearing around a private “couples only” retreat that is offering a special therapy to free mutants of their trauma, they need an actual couple with relationship issues to go in deep cover and investigate. Guess which pair of surly Southerners get assigned to the job?
Most of what this critic knows about Rogue and Gambit came from watching the 1990’s X-Men cartoon. Miraculously, given how intensive the continuity around the X-Men is in the comics, this turned out to be more than I needed to enjoy Rogue & Gambit #1.
The focus of this issue is strictly upon their characters and there’s no references to anything in outside titles, apart from Rogue’s membership in The Avengers. Casual comics readers who haven’t been keeping up on recent events in the Marvel Universe can pick-up Rogue & Gambit #1 worry-free.
Kelly Thompson’s script does a solid job of portraying both characters, though the story is largely told from Rogue’s point-of-view. Her reasoning for being wary of Gambit is plainly laid out but Gambit’s reasons for approaching Rogue about figuring out where they stand now are less clear. The engaging humor and interplay between the two proves engaging and makes up for this issue’s lack of action, apart from the opening training sequence in The Danger Room.
The artwork is all-around fantastic. Pere Perez’s style is crisp and clear, with the story flowing smoothly from panel to panel and the camera angles constantly changing so there’s a strong sense of visual interest even in the simple scenes of two characters sitting in an office and talking to one another. The colors by Frank D’Armata are brilliantly vivid, though some purists may be disappointed that Gambit has traded his trademark hot pink body armor for a more muted purple. Most X-Fans – and indeed most comic readers – should find this book an enjoyable read regardless.
8/10.
Written by The Critic The Internet Deserves, but not the one it needs right now…. Matt Morrison. He’s a smart-ass guardian. A sarcastic protector. A Snark Knight.