Written by Paul Jenkins
Illustrated by Roberto De La TorreBefore Messiah Complex came Endangered Species. This is the prelude to the X-Men Event of 2011. What does it mean to be a leader? What does it do to a person? What do the choices you make mean about the person you are? This mini-series delves into these issues and will give an X-Men reader what they need to know about their favorite mutants before everything changes in July.
Age of X is behind us, and now we’ve got Schism ahead. What’s the next thing to render the X-Men totally different from the X-Men you’ve known since the last thing that rendered them totally different? Is it worth the investment? Can we even judge that on the first quarter of a prelude? Let’s have a look after the jump.
Right now, the X-Men could really use a shake-up in their status quo. Between six or seven or umpteen books, I still couldn’t tell you the main focusing points of the line, or tell you what’s motivating most of the characters right now. Subplots and characters blip in and out like teases in a fan-dance. Generally speaking, the focus has rarely been on telling character-driven stories, so much as fitting characters into plot-driven stories, even if those characters only fit in as cameos to please that one fan of Match somewhere out there on the Internet. (If you are reading this: hello.) Things like the death of Nightcrawler barely registered as dramatic moments to me, because it’d been so long since Nightcrawler had had anything of his own to do (rather than something done for a plot that just happened to be done by him, and could just as well have been done by Magik or some other teleporter) that his character had been reduced to “guy who has been around for a while.” If that’s the sole motivator for existing, then why exist?
The good thing about the looming Schism X-event — which is, presumably, Civil War But X-Men But Not But Yes — is that in dropping a conflict bomb into the characters’ laps, it creates an opportunity to give characters interesting, defined roles. For the past couple years, everyone has sat on their little island and… sat… on their little island, really. At this point, anything to disrupt the lethargy of the setting is a good thing. The thing is, though: we’ve been having these uprootings and disruptions and conflicts and blah blah blah like clockwork for nearly a decade now, coming something like once every year or two. Does this change look any more promising than the last one, or the one before that, or…?
The answer to that question is a resounding: “Maybe?” Prelude to Schism is, to go by the first issue, a series of character pieces from Paul Jenkins, who used to have a pretty solid reputation on the internet for that sort of thing. This issue has Professor X on the cover, and is told from his point of view; the next one has Magneto, and presumably will focus on Magneto’s viewpoint. To be more specific, it’s all about Professor X’s feelings regarding Cyclops, framed in the older man reflecting on the paths he’s watched Cyclops take. The set-up for all of this is some sort of… big threatening thing coming toward Utopia. It worries everyone in the cast, but all we see of it is a whopping nothing. There’s not even a tease, or a cliffhanger. It’s just blank — there’s a threat, but we don’t know what it is, we just know that it’s making people reflect on their lives for some reason. There have admittedly been more auspicious beginnings to comic-book crossovers.
Art for the prelude comes from Roberto De La Torre, whose progress over the past couple years has been pretty amazing. He started off as pretty decent on Ms. Marvel — nothing exceptional, but nothing worth writing home (or a review) about. Then on Iron Man, he started darkening things up a bit — it was like watching Sienkiewicz slowly find his style back on Moon Knight. Now, he’s fully given himself over to the moody, shadow-drenched style of the likes of Alex Maleev. It gives the whole book a grim but hazy atmosphere, appropriate to a trip into Xavier’s memories. His figures could stand a little more drafting in spots, but no one ever gets over that; as far as this and his recent Daredevil work have shown me, Roberto De La Torre has finally arrived at the party, and if nothing else, this mini-series has his art going for it.
Continued below
As pretty as it can be to look at, though, the thing is this: we don’t know what’s being set up here (at least, if we don’t read comics news ever). We don’t even get a hint at what’s being set up, beyond the title. This is a prelude, but instead it reads like a retrospective. Sure, this may be important, but if every issue is just one character dwelling on their past with another character, then we risk spending too little time in the present, where we need to be seeing seeds of Schism unfolding. Perhaps Prelude to Schism is a misnomer; if the mini keeps up like this, Primer for Character Motivations Going Into Schism might be better. On the other hand, as I noted above, when’s the last time we saw time taken to actually explain any X-Men character’s motivations?
Based on just this one issue, though, I have no idea if Schism is going to be worth it or not. If the rest of the build-up is this leisurely, then it may well come off as just another arbitrary re-wiring of the status quo, until the next time things get a little too complacent. But in the meantime, Paul Jenkins is focusing on the character-exploration he built his name on, and Roberto De La Torre is drawing the hell out of it… so even if it goes nowhere, it’ll still be a pleasant enough ride.
Final Verdict: 6.0 / Browse-ish-buy-ish
