The Marvel of recent years could hardly be said to be reserved when it comes to game-changing comic book events, “Battle of the Atom”, “Goblin Nation”, “Origin Sin”, “Death of Wolverine”, (the heavily documented and discussed by Multiversity) “Axis”, and most recently “Spider-Verse”. It seems like, love them or hate them, crossovers are going to be a big part of the House of Ideas output for a while to come.
Written by Elliott Kalan
Illustrated by Marco Failla
In the wake of Wolverine’s death, Spider-Man follows through on a promise to Logan to uncover a secret agenda lurking in the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Not surprisingly, the school greets his arrival and mission with a great deal of mistrust and trepidation.
Fresh off the back of both the “Death of Wolverine” and “Spider-Verse” events, a note left by the late Logan leads Spider-Man to sign up as an unlikely guidance councillor at the Jean Grey School. Ostensibly Spidey’s instructions are straight-forward enough: coach the ‘special class’ through some basic science, philosophy, and self-defence, and try and prepare them for the mysteries of whatever life holds for mutants who aren’t smart, powerful, or charismatic enough to make it onto an X team. However, Peter quickly reveals a more sinister factor to his new employment: before he died, Logan revealed a tip-off that one of the ‘special class’ was actually a mole working against the X-Men and filtering secrets to an as yet unidentified mutant hating faction. And, given the not-inconsiderable size of the X-Men’s rogues’ gallery, it’s no surprise that Spidey isn’t sure exactly who’s involved.
On the surface of things, it’s reasonably easy to understand the appeal of this comic from Marvel’s point of view. In the wake of numerous extended crossovers and confusingly convoluted storylines there’s always the worry that some of their readers might be suffering from Event Fatigue. Given the potential for drop-off it makes sense that they’re hedging their bets by offering up two of their most profitable and well-liked franchises in one, easy to digest, package.
Unfortunately, for me at least, I think the gesture might be a bit too formulaic for my liking. Spider-Man swings in and takes up the mantle of teacher easily enough and, although he initially struggles to get to grips with being the only ‘flatscan’ in the building, it’s clearly only a matter of time before this band of misfits grows to tolerate, appreciate, and maybe even admire their new guidance councillor. I would have liked to have seen this series kick off in a slightly different direction to the series that came before, but it seems like other than a change in the titular character we’re not going to be seeing much of a difference in the standard ‘students get embroiled in danger but learn a valuable lesson’ storylines that we were receiving before.
That being said, I was a fan of “Wolverine and the X-Men” (the spiritual predecessor to this new run) and, while it wasn’t overly deep, it was a fun-loving, easy-going comic about teen angst and Logan’s stumbling steps towards becoming a teacher that still managed to juggle some touching moments at times. And much of what made that comic-book enjoyable is still present in “Spider-Man and the X-Men”. Spider-Man is on wise-cracking form from even before his first visible appearance on the page and the kids in the ‘special class’, a variation on Grant Morrison’s initial concept that include odd-ball duo Ernst and Martha, are witty enough, if a bit interchangeable with their speech patterns.
Marco Failla’s dynamic artwork quickly reminds us of the bright, visually distinctive style of Bachalo’s work on Jason Aaron’s run before and the light, colourful presentation of the characters, combined with the many well executed elements of visual humour make this issue feel almost as much like a Saturday morning cartoon as a comic.
But even just one issue in, SXM (a tenuous but necessary abbreviation) seems to be worryingly lacking in cohesion with the rest of the Marvel universe. Elliott Kalan’s Peter Parker seems largely unaffected by the events of his recent multiverse-spanning debacle and could have been pulled from almost any period of Spidey’s long comic-book tenure. He spouts the traditional lines about power and responsibility with a youthful earnestness that wouldn’t be out of place coming from one of the more naïve students. And speaking of the students, none of the ‘special class’ seem overly affected by the loss of their teacher, mentor and friend Wolverine. While it might be a heavy issue to deal with going into a new series Wolverine’s death is the reason behind Spidey’s recent appointment, but, other than a few barbed lines between Spider-Man and the other teachers, we barely hear how the loss of the JGS’s headmaster has affected anyone.
Continued belowIt must be said that Kalan and Failla do provide an action-packed first issue, with battles that span the front lawn, the class-room, the danger room, and the Natural History Museum and pull together a handful of amusingly d-list opponents in interesting ways. They seem to have decided on the spirit of this book early on, embracing Jason Aaron’s earlier run as their source material. However in taking on board much of what made Wolverine and the X-Men good, they also fall prey to the tempting track of focussing on their titular character rather than expanding the base of next-gen X-Men for the audience. The whole issue Spider-Man spends his time reacting, trying to survive rather than doing much in the way of investigating the mole. By the close of the issue we’re still largely unsure what the power-sets of his various charges are, much less why any of them might want to overthrow mutant-kind.
This comic is clearly an attempt to fulfil the more whimsical end of the X-Men quota that Wolverine’s absence has made necessary. Kalan and Failla’s Spider-Man swings in with his own recognisable brand of humour, but I do feel like, lacking the focussed, gruff, hunting nature of Wolverine, SXM might end up feeling a lot less focussed than Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo’s run.
Final Verdict: 6.4 – Kalan and Failla provide a bright, bubbly continuation of an X-book which is fun; however, there is that a lack of focus could scupper this book’s chances before it gets underway.
