At the same time as I bought Young Inhumans, I picked up this X-men title with both excitement and apprehension. By now, you must know that I've been a fan of the X-men from the time I picked up a comic at summer camp. Great characters, great storyline. My apprehension came from the fact that modern comics are not my thing.
So the story picks up with an intro/recap of the situation (good). Captain America leads Hydra and USA, California is a land for Mutants controlled by Hellfire Club. A lot of eyeroll, but fine, I'm still in.
The Team is composed of the original X-men/X-Factor with some alternate Wolverine. They seem to be some type of reincarnation of the originals. Since I missed the first volume, I did not get their origins and there were very little to allow me to figure it out.
The new dynamic is as follows: Jean is the leader, the reliable and powerful one while the others dance around her. Unlike the doubt and angst-ridden girl that would turn into a flawed woman that would become the most powerful creature in the universe (Phoenix). She has no flaws and is tough, decisive, and precise at all times. Even later when she and Cyclops get a full mental merge, she can read all of Cyclops' mind but she can close hers off. Pretty Mary-Sue-ish. Bad character design.
Now Cyclops is relegate to being the boytoy of all the women in the story. Jean, the White Queen (Ex), Miss Sinister (Ex, when did he become a lingerie gal?), Goblin Queen. Jean calls him out on it "Which evil gal did you not get with?" which was a fun bit. Other and mental-joining Jean, he has no personal development.
Iceman's stick is that he's gay. And is very much a token character otherwise. He has little-to-no interesting development. Limited development. I like his power tweak where he does get some enlarge into a massive snow golem is cool.
Angel has fire wings, which is cool. Even tho I much prefered Angel's original thing. The Fire and Ice thing looks good but is not really used through the volume.
The one character who has an interesting storyline is Beast. He learns some magic and that is interesting, could be a longer story but it pays off as it gets into a big event.
The Wolverine-like guy is the least interesting and he takes away from the plot overall by really only adding a not-Wolverine-Wolverine guy.
Now the villains are so packed in this and their motivation is nebulous at best or overly simplistic and boring. I cannot decide which. Those villains were the best part of the X-men. Magneto. The Hellfire Club. The Goblin Queen. They had motivation that were easy to understand and that were relatable. They appear here but most of them are just bad reflections of these originals. It's like the writer wants all the villains to be mysterious and unknown so they all just come about doing random things "because they are bad."
Sooooooo. To come to a rating... The story/character development is a 2 or 3 due to the holes and nebulousness of some of the villains' goal but the action scenes are cool. The art is a solid 4: the characters are well-drawn and the action is clear and enjoyable. That said, I will settle on a strong 3/5. I expected to rate this much like Young Inhumans but this was a much better story. Heck, there were things happening that weren't just someone being a b*tch.
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