X-Men # 1 Comic Review

1991's X-Men # 1 sold over eight million copies, partially fueled by the speculator's market at the time, becoming the best selling comic book of all time. This is the first time since 1991 that Marvel Comics has released an X-Men # 1.

While the first X-Men # 1 was written by X-Men and Comic legend Chris Claremont, this time Marvel took a different approach. This issue was written by crime novelist turned comic book writer Victor Gischler.

The artist here is Paco Medina. The art here is good - perfect for an X-Men comic. The figures are recognizable, and not all the same. The coloring is bright and colorful. The art is not too photo-realistic for this type of comic, and it doesn't look like all the faces are traced like many comics these days.

22 pages is the length of a standard comic, and usually that is enough to tell an issue's worth of story. Unfortunately, as this is the beginning of not just a new story, but also a new series, I found it lacking. Marvel should have gone for a double sized issue (or at least 32 pages) because not too much happened in this issue. I expected some setup, but this issue was all set up. I have faith that given a few more issues, the action and characterization will be ramped up, but for a # 1, this issue is not likely to create any new X-Men fans.

The issue starts off with former fan-favorite kid X-Man Jubilee (she lost her powers a year or so ago) and current fan-favorite kid X-Men (taking the place of Jubilee) Pixie sitting at a table talking somewhere in San Francisco (where the X-Men are now based), while this big guy wearing a mask and full trench coat starts walking towards them. Pixie conveniently goes to get nachos just as big black Trench coat guy reaches his destination.

He opens his trench coat and "BWOOOOOM" he explodes, getting big black trench coat guy goo all over Jubilee.

Keeping in mind that the storyline is called "Curse of the Mutants" and it was advertised as an X-Men Vs. Vampires storyline, guest starring Blade, the vampire hunter, the characters proceed for the next twenty or so pages to dance around the word vampire, avoiding it at all costs.

I'm not sure if the writer wasn't aware that it would be advertised this way, or if he thought it would be a neat thing to do, but it wasn't. Especially with the previous weeks tie-in issue "Death of Dracula" also written by Gischler. This just seemed forced and to that effect, the characters wasted an awful lot of words dancing around the word "Vampire" when they could have just said it and been done with it.

Back to the story, we see Jubilee being tested by the X-Club (a group of X-Men scientists) and it appears she has a virus, caused by the vampire bomb. So next issue..Vampire Jubilee anyone?

That aside, characterization is solid throughout the issue. We learn that the Vampire Bomb target was in fact Jubilee, which right now seems pretty random, but i imagine this will be explained later.

The main X-Men we see in this issue are Wolverine, Pixie, and Angel. They have a good action scene later in the issue, doing some scouting work where they get attacked by a few vampires.

There are a couple more gripes i have with the issue, such as why send a kid (Pixie) to fight what you think are Vampires? In the X-Men universe, they are a pretty big threat. Also, it was frustrating that Angel didn't turn into Archangel once in the issue (something that likely wouldn't be known if a new reader were to pick this up).

My final problem with the issue is its accessibility. We see Cyclops Jubilee, Pixie, Storm, Angel, Dr. Nemesis, Dr. Kavita Rao, and Wolverine. If a new reader were to pick this up, besides Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, and possibly Angel, they would have no idea who these characters are. At the very least, text boxes introducing the characters should have been used here, like they are in many other comics, including Matt Fractions Uncanny X-Men.

I give the issue 2 1/2 out of 5 stars. I see potential for this series, but a lot of rookie mistakes were made in this issue. Hopefully things will get ironed out in the issues moving forward.