Written by Jason Aaron
Illustrated by Chris BachaloWolverine and his X-Men have very little chance of surviving the new Hellfire Club. And that’s without another classic villain (the villain of the most important X-Story ever) returning!
Here it is, gang. Wolverine and the X-Men #2, or as I like to call it, “the most on-the-nose titled comic on the stands today.” And before you start throwing stars, understand that I don’t mean that as a bad thing. In fact, I don’t mean it as a bad thing at all. I just feel a little sorry for Cyclops. I mean, how come Uncanny X-Men isn’t called Cyclops and the X-Men?
Know what I’m sayin’? No? Okay, let’s figure it out after the jump.
I used to work at a comic shop with a guy who couldn’t understand why DC Comics had never published a comic called Batman and Robin. To be fair, until I heard him talk about it, it had never really crossed my mind that DC was missing a major opportunity, and I quickly adopted his disbelief, until, lo and behold, nearly a decade later, DC did that very thing. Wolverine and the X-Men is that same kind of idea, and despite being a title used by a relatively short-lived animated series from a few years ago, it’s a title that’s somehow fresh and exciting, if maybe just a little too precise.
If you missed the first issue, they you might not know, the book’s basic premise is that Wolverine, disgruntled with Cyclops and his running of Utopia (as seen in X-Men: Schism), packs up a bunch of young mutants and heads back to Westchester, where he rebuilds and reopens a new school for mutants, which he christens as The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. But before the school can officially open its doors, it has to pass inspection by the New York Department of Education, and to say things aren’t going well is an understatement, especially when the all new preteen Hellfire Club launches an attack on the school, causing the very ground around the place to come to life.
This second issue picks up immediately after, and where the first issue spent its pages introducing the cast and new facility, this one jumps right into the thick of it, showing us what these people can do and why we should be impressed. The reason, of course, is because the X-Men are completely and totally awesome.
As the seemingly living earth quakes and begins to tear the new school apart, Wolverine pounces into action, leading more by example instead of stratagem. Wolverine’s sooooo not Cyclops here. This isn’t a team of superheroes like the Avengers or a paramilitary strike team like X-Force, or Cyclops’ own Uncanny X-Men. No, these guys are teachers with amazing abilities, and at the first sign of danger, their first thought is the students’ safety. I hope they continue to play up the differences between Wolverine’s crew and Cyclops’ team. It’s nothing new to have concurrent X-Men books and teams like this, but I don’t think the two main titles have ever had such distinctive and independent voices.
For me, the biggest draw of this book is, of course, Jason Aaron. Over the last couple years, we’ve seen Aaron become the Wolverine guy, taking the character to new heights of emotion and creativity. If Brian Michael Bendis’s work on Avengers is responsible from bringing Wolverine into the greater Marvel Universe, Aaron’s responsible for actually making him good. Aaron figured out that you can tell just about any story you want to with Wolverine, and he’s done just that. I’ve heard some say that Wolverine taking the role of headmaster at a school is out of character, and forced and out of place, but really, after everything Aaron’s done with him, it seems like a natural and damn near perfect progression to me.
The art in Wolverine and the X-Men is provided by the tremendously talented Chris Bachalo. Bachalo’s no stranger to the X-men, having drawn all of these characters more than a few times over the years. I love how hyper-kinetic his version of Wolverine is, and that he’s always drawn appropriately just a little bit shorter than everybody else. Ice-man ends up displaying a new power set, too, and Bacholo runs with it, filling page after page with different types of Ice-Men, each different and unique from those around them.
Continued belowConfession time: while I enjoy the man’s art and character work, I’m not always the biggest fan of Bachalo’s storytelling, and this issue has just a few spots here and there, where his style dominates the story, and interrupts the flow of the things to the point where I had to stop for just a second and figure out exactly what’s going on. There’s a sequence right at the beginning where Wolverine is slicing through all of this moving stone, and is shocked when the stone forms a fist and actually punches him in the face.
It’s already apparent this ain’t going to be your daddy’s X-Men. Aaron and Bachalo are making comics like two mad twelve year old geniuses at a never ending sleepover. They’ve already given us the return of both Kid Omega and Doop (did you miss him in #1?), the premiere of Kid Gladiator, the “Hellfire Cubs” (you guys can use that), and the sensational character find of 2011, Broo, the Brood Boy. And with this issue’s introduction of a gun that literally fires Frankenstein monsters equipped with flamethrowers, and the mind-blowing revelation that you can somehow be infected with a Wendigo and/or Sauran virus, I cannot wait to see what else they have in store for us in the coming months. I’m starting to wonder if Aaron even knows the word boring exists.
Seriously, guys, this book is exciting beyond belief, and I haven’t been this thrilled to read the X-Men since I was a kid.
Final Verdict: 9.5 – C’mon, folks… Frankensteins with flamethrowers. What else do you want?
