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Longbox Diving – The Maiden Voyage(s) of the X-Club!

By | December 7th, 2011
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Later today, one of the X-Properties with the most untapped creative potential graduates to its own five issue mini-series (that we will hopefully actually see all five of). However these are not the first X-Club adventures voracious, science loving readers can partake from. Hidden deep within both X-Crossovers Second Coming and Curse of the Mutants lie two frequently glossed over one-shots that mark the first two solo adventures of the X-Men’s Science Squad (minus a jaunt here and a mission there in Uncanny X-Men, of course) I’ve said it before, but Second Coming Revelations: Blind Science and X-Men: Smoke and Blood define the term diamonds in the rough, and it’s clear by this mini-series existing that I am not the only one that thinks so.

Click on down to find out why.

The fact that the X-Club was given the initial one-shot they were given is pretty unsurprising. They had had a few spotlight mini-arcs in Uncanny X-Men already and smack dab in the biggest X-Men event in a few years, Marvel was looking to flood the market with vaguely mutant related-ish books. Hence, the X-Club got the nod and one of the most underrated titles to rise from Second Coming saw the light of day.

There was a lot to like about Blind Science, be it the book’s tongue-in-cheek approach to super heroics, its incredible frontal approach to an apocalyptic future or it’s genuine fleshing out of characters which, by and large, had not been personified too heavily in Uncanny. However, the greatest and most apparent star quality of the book was it’s ability to weave actual science fact into the mix along with it’s witty one-liners and explosions. Now, it should be noted that I have never been that big a fan of math or science, but thats largely since every bit of exposure I’ve had to them have been somewhat rigid and required me to adapt my thinking to the standards of the subject as opposed to presenting themselves in a way I could understand innately (it should come as no surprise that I was a hardcore humanities kid throughout high school and university…although the fact that I write for a comic book journalism website may have given that away as well).

That said, one of my favorite books is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which sought to explain average science to average people using common language and rhetoric familiar to most people. Si Spurrier did the exact same thing as the words spouting out of the mouths of Dr. Nemesis, Dr. Rao and Madison Jeffries really hammered home some (I assume) relatively complex scientific theory and really made the victor of the day turn out to be science itself. Now, in less skilled hands, that very idea could have been a colossal failure. Comic book fans are notoriously sensitive to the inclusion of “real world” scenarios in their comics, so the fact that Spurrier managed to keep the sense of “this is still a comic book” well intact (with the help of the stunningly comic-conventional art of Paul Davidson of course) while still using real world fact to push the story forward made for an immensely entertaining story that ended up to be more than the sum of it’s individual moving parts.

But I assumed that was it. What I saw is what I would get. However, once the next big X-Event rolled around, there were the X-Club again! This time starring in a vampire-centric story amidst a vampire-centric mini event called Smoke and Blood. Whereas Blind Science was a 100% futuristic sci-fi story, Smoke and Blood was based much more in the psychological horror genre as the team attempts to solve the vampire plague with science (!!) and end up angering one particular blood sucker in the process. Here again, the use of legitimate science fact to propel the story worked wonders and again it was set into motion right in the thick of conventional comic book story tropes like mind control and excessive blood. It went further than Blind Science in the sense that it proved that not only was Spurrier himself capable of writing in a drastically divergent genre, but that the “science as story motivator” idea was adaptable to different genres as well. Combine that with the angular, diffused art of Gabriel Hernandez Walta and you have a near perfect one-and-done story that just further proved the potential of the X-Club as a viable property and Si Spurrier’s ability to pilot them to maximum success.

Which brings us to today, and release of X-Club #1. In today’s comic market and especially at Marvel, it’s a miracle that a book with such a targeted niche market made it to the shelves (I assume the X on its cover is what ultimately let it sneak through). However, if you find yourself hankering for more sciencey goodness when you put that issue down, you would be foolish not to track these two one-shots down and help spread the gospel that is the X-Men’s Science Team.


//TAGS | Longbox Diving

Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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