Marc Guggenheim and Adrian Syaf usher in a new age for the X-Men, but unfortunately there’s still a whole lot to hate and fear. (Minor spoilers follow below.)
Written by Marc GuggenheimCover by Ardian Syaf
Illustrated by Ardian Syaf & Jay Leisten
Colored by Frank Martin
Lettered by Cory PetitFROM THE ASHES OF INHUMANS VS X-MEN, AN ALL-NEW TEAM OF X-MEN RISES! Xavier’s dream comes full circle as KITTY PRYDE takes the reins and assembles a squad of the most iconic X-Men to fight at her side. STORM. COLOSSUS. NIGHTCRAWLER. OLD MAN LOGAN. PRESTIGE. They are X-MEN GOLD! And they’re on a mission to be Earth’s finest heroes, even when that means defending those who hate and fear them. Brought to you by an all-star creative team of Marc Guggenheim (X-MEN, S.H.I.E.L.D., television’s Arrow) and Ardian Syaf (BATGIRL, SUPERMAN/BATMAN, BRIGHTEST DAY), a new beginning for the strangest heroes of all starts here!
When Marvel first started advertising the new status quo for the X-Men after “Inhumans Vs. X-Men”, there was a little tag in the corner that audaciously assured the audience: “You ASKED for it. You GOT it.” Back in the day, when Marvel was pretty much running things, this kind of swagger worked. When you told Grant Morrison he could take the X-Men and do whatever he wanted with them, you could afford to swing your shoes around. These days, though, Marvel doesn’t have a whole lot to swing their shoes around about. So when they start talking about people asking for stuff and then people getting it, my first question is “Who’s the ‘You’?”
Marc Guggenheim and Ardian Syaf’s opening storyline is called ‘Back To The Basics,’ so let’s start there. After years of Terrigen Clouds and various interuniversal conflicts, the X-Men have rarely felt like their old selves. Brian Michael Bendis built off the decades of past stories and integrating new and interesting mutants into a world now populated with original versions of the original X-Men. This led to some fascinating conflicts and, eventually, to most everyone hating Beast. Then Bendis’s run ended, everyone forgot about those cool new X-Men, and everything got a little bit muddled. So it’s unclear from the beginning what these basics are supposed to be. Is it Pre-Bendis? Pre-Morrison? Pre . . . Lobdell?
What it feels like it’s trying to recapture, at first blush, is the feeling of Joss Whedon’s “Astonishing X-Men” (for my money, the best work he’s done in any medium, don’t @ me). Guggenheim makes great strides to position this team of X-Men; leader Kitty Pryde, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Old Man Logan, and Prestige (more on her later); as the kind of bold team of heroes Cyclops lead against…that weird alien with the thingie on his face, you remember the one.
Guggenheim, however, is already two runs down in the first inning because he’s short Cyclops and Wolverine, inarguably the main characters of the X-Men for the last 20 years. For sure, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Kitty are all hugely significant, but those Cyclops and Wolverine have almost always been the guiding personalities of any X-Men team, moreso even than Professor Xavier. In the right hands, Storm could easily fill that gap, but she’s spent the last year or so editorially mandated to spearhead some truly dumb initiatives. In this new status quo, where she is unsure of her role in the X-Men due to her severe regret, you just want to crawl into the comic and reassure her, “We know didn’t want to do that, Ororo. This wasn’t your idea. You’d never do something that stupid.” So we’re stuck with a Storm that is completely un-Storm-like. So she’s in no condition to turn this ship around.
Nightcrawler and Colossus do little to distinguish themselves. To be fair, it’s a first issue and there’s not a lot of room for everyone to have their moments. Kurt does barely anything and Peter is back to pining over Kitty.
And then there’s Rachel Summers. Hoo boy.
So.
Rachel Summers comes from a future where mutants are rounded up in what are basically concentration camps. This comic tells us that Kitty Pryde, who happens to be Jewish, thinks it would be a great idea for Rachel to just push all that aside (because it’s not “forward” thinking enough) and change her name to Prestige. So that’s a thing we have to read about. Also, Wolverine is still dead and we’re still stuck with Old Man Logan. I’m sure that Marvel thinks Old Man Logan is just as good because Logan was such a rad movie but, I mean, no way that’s a one to one link, you know?
Continued belowSo, that leaves Kitty Pryde. She has always been a character that was easy to identify with and root for, in many ways the heart of the X-Men. It would be a worthy thing, to see what the X-Men would be like if they were crafted around that kind of philosophy. Unfortunately, much like what happened to Storm in the previous run, this story is turning Kitty Pryde into what it needs, whether or not it makes sense for the Kitty Pryde who’s been around for the past 20-odd years. (Also, Bendis made her, basically, Professor X, like three years ago tops, so this isn’t really the fresh bold move this comic thinks it is.)
In perhaps the most drastic example of how this comic really doesn’t quite get Kitty Pryde, after a severely unexciting fight with Terrax, who has to my knowledge literally never interacted with them once, the triumphant X-Men are stared down by bystanders who classically hate and fear them. Instead of going “Back” to the “Basics” of a team of X-Men who know humans hate them but, like the bad-ass renegades they are and always should be, could care less, Kitty turns to these gross bigots . . . and apologizes. She tells them that mutants have been bad lately, and that her team of X-Men are going to do better. They promise. It’s at this point where the reader would be forgiven for pointing at themselves and looking over their shoulder, going, “Me? No way you thought this was what I asked for.”
The issue is not without its moments of interpersonal charm. Logan and Kitty have some fun moments sniping at each other. But then he actually uses the word “Gold” to describe something. (Looking forward to someone in “X-Men Blue” #1 fitting that word into conversation, hopefully with Beast.) And then, also, Kitty Pryde, on two separate occasions, pointlessly utters a “classic” X-Men catchphrase. I don’t want to ruin the surprise but you’ve probably guessed both already.
There’s actually a strong sense that this is what passes for the “Basics”. Just throwing together those words that you loved in all those great X-Men stories of the past. Much of the rest of the issue feels like it’s checking off more of those X-Boxes. Another egregious example: Even though the team has at least one flier and one teleporter, the entire team takes a Blackbird to presumably noisily traverse the twenty blocks from Central Park to the UN.
Overall, the story here is still haunted by the truly misguided story decisions of the last few years, and all that baggage has left us with a team that, on the cover of a comic might look like those classic characters you know and love, but none of them feel the way they should. I don’t begrudge Guggenheim here. If this was a real “X-Men Rebirth,” it would be driven by the personalities that built the X-Men: A Storm that beat the crap out of Callisto. A Cyclops. A real Wolverine. A team of mutants that believed in a better future but certainly weren’t going to try and placate people who hated them. But unfortunately, this story is stuck in today’s Marvel. Cyclops is dead. Wolverine is dead. And for everyone else, “Inhumans Vs. X-Men” still happened.
Ardian Syaf and Jay Leisten do okay work here, but it lies a little too much on the classic side. The X-Men at their best always chafed against the constraints of more traditional comic art. I’ve always preferred them with something a little more crazy and interesting than straight-ahead superhero art, although it’s clear that that’s the intent. At varying points in the issue, there are echoes of Gary Frank, a smidgen of David Finch (especially in some of the faces), and a little Brandon Peterson or Ethan Van Sciver. Unfortunately, all these artists can come off stiff if not executed right.
A perfect example is Old Man Logan’s duster. There’s so much shadow detail on it that it looks like it weighs 40 pounds. I guess he does carry all that adamantium on his bones, so maybe he’s just used to carrying heavy stuff around? The storytelling and layouts aren’t incredibly exciting, and the linework varies from looking tight and elegant to scratchy and rushed. Frank Martin isn’t given a huge amount of variety to work with in terms of colors, and there are few scenes that really ask for any kind of serious “mood.”
Continued belowSo we come back to this question. Who is “You”? Who wanted a team of X-Men that tries to meet intolerance halfway? Who wanted Xavier’s mansion in the middle of Central Park? Who wanted to see the X-Men fight . . . Terrax?
As someone who started reading X-Men comics nearly 30 years ago, when the X-Men died in Texas saving the universe as a team of weirdos embedded in pathos and resolute in the face of a world that thinks they’re just totally gross, I’m getting a sneaking suspicion that it’s not me.
Final Verdict: 3.2 – The current status quo for our favorite mutants is in many ways inescapable, so in some ways it was inevitable that “X-Men Gold” #1 was bound to disappoint. But things don’t have to be this bad, do they? I don’t think anybody asked for this, but everybody got it.
