Let's Talk About The X-Men Books

Hi, I'm David Harth, and it feels like we were just here. Remember when this was going to be a weekly column? Good times. Anyway, way back when this started, we were talking about Hickman's House Of X/Powers Of X. It's hard to believe that was two years ago. Anyway, we've turned a corner in the X books since then, and I feel like we need to talk about things.

So, in case you don't know this, I review most of the X-Men books. All of them but Marauders and Excalibur. I've also been reading the X-Men books for thirty years now. I've gone back and read a lot of stuff I've missed, and the stuff I haven't read, I'm familiar with. So, I feel like a bit of an expert on the X-Men. I feel like I can wax poetic on the subject and all that. So, let's wax. I'm going to start with a simple statement and go from there.

The X books are so broken right now, it's not funny.

Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of them. Wolverine is amazing and the best the book has been in years. X-Force is pretty cool. New Mutants has gotten really, really good. Hellions is consistently good fun. That's pretty much all the good I have to say of the books that are ongoing. Like I said, I don't read Marauders or Excalibur- Marauders because even though I love most of the characters, I just kind of don't care about it all. It's so Emma centric, and I've been happy to get away from her after the last two decades. Excalibur…. Well, when I say I don't like it, I'm being nice. I'm a person who loved Claremont and Davis's Excalibur and this book, even though it tries to do a lot of what they did when they were on the book, is not my cup of tea. I'm not a Tini Howard fan. Read my X-Corp reviews.

Anyway, I also love Children of the Atom, it's one of the best things I've read in years, and it's ending… but X-Corp is still getting published. X-Factor was constantly casually brilliant, and that one ended. Way Of X is super interesting, and that one's ending. And yet X-Corp isn't. And yes, I'm going to make a lot of X-Corp jokes because that book is just kind of weird. In fact, let's talk about it for a paragraph.

One of the cruxes of Dawn Of X and Reign Of X is how human racism has affected relations between the world and Krakoa. Basically, the only reason any nation deals with Krakoa is because of how beneficial their drugs are. So, the thought that mutants would start a corporation to sell more stuff to humans is just kind of asinine. Like, the book assumes that capitalism is actually a fair system, which it's not, and that governments wouldn't put massive tariffs on the corporation’s goods, especially if the goods were so well made and sold well enough to disrupt their own corporations. On top of that, the last issue had them trying to get into the telecommunications business, which… look, the way things on Krakoa are going, like with Beast putting bugs in everything he can, there's no way that Krakoa wouldn't be data farming and even if they weren't, why would human governments and corporations trust them with data management when they hate Krakoa? The whole idea behind the book is flawed, and that's not even getting into the art, which is like '90s Stuart Immonen, which was before he got good, and the characterization of some of the characters is… well, Monet and Madrox are not themselves, and it bugs me.

And that's not even taking into account how much the Hellfire Gala's fireworks have probably angered every human government on Earth.

Anyway, then we have X-Men. I have a lot of feelings about that book. Okay, so here's the problem with that book, as I see it. Why are we doing the X-Men as superheroes again? I get that Cyclops liked being a superhero in the big fight at the end of X of Swords but seriously, is that the way we should be going right now? And again, I get what they're doing- it's the same thing Whedon had Cyclops do in Astonishing X-Men after Morrison's revolutionary New X-Men. It still bothers me immensely, though, even though it’s in character and it bothers me even more that Hickman put those words in Cyclops’s mouth. It ignores years of Cyclops’s development just so we can have a superhero X-Men book again. The X-Men books have been all about being different for the last few years, doing new things. So why are ripping Mr. Fake Feminist Ally? It doesn't follow.

And don't get me wrong, it's a good book. Duggan gets the characters, the book is kind of interesting, and it looks like it's building to everyone discovering the Krakoan resurrection secret, which would probably quickly end the whole X-Men as superheroes thing. That's pretty cool. At this point, though, I just don't know how I feel about the X-Men as superheroes right now. It's just a weird feel, especially after what we've been getting for a while now. The whole book strikes me as hollow. I've complained a lot about Hickman's wheel spinning, but it was interesting. It was different. X-Men isn't different. It's trying to be, but it's just not.

It's just the latest X-Men disappointment in the last year. The first year of the X-Men books was all-around excellent, except for Excalibur, which I've never actually heard anyone say anything good about. If you have, find me on Twitter and tell me. I'd be interested. Anyway, this second year of X-Men books has been not so great in a lot of ways. The first, of course, is X Of Swords. You know, the 22-part crossover that kind of meandered for THE FIRST ELEVEN ISSUES. Literally, two issues were good, and it was just the Wolverine-centric ones. And don't give me that, "Well, Marauders was good, David," because it wasn't. No one wants to see Shuri and Storm fight. Only MCU fans really care about Shuri. We wanted to see Storm fight Black Panther. The whole story was a wash, though, as Black Panther reveals he just would have given Storm the sword anyway. Like, cool, the story didn't matter at all. Great job to all involved.

Then, we get the bait and switch of the next eleven parts, as what we thought were going to be cool fights were barely cool fights, except in the Wolverine-centric issues, which were awesome. The whole crossover was long, drawn-out, and kind of boring. Afterwards, it took months for anyone to remember that the Arakko mutants could be used, and the return of the Captain Britain Corps only matters if someone cares about Excalibur, which no one does. The one-shots were done by Larraz and Gracia, though, so they looked amazing.

We're going to take a minute to talk about S.W.O.R.D. for a moment. This is a pretty good book, but then you realize that only two of the issues aren't part of a crossover. Two of seven, one of which was the first issue. The first crossover was a King In Black one and I don't care about Venom or symbiotes, so I didn't care about these issues, other than the last issue where Manifold got rid of all of the symbiotes in a second because it showed how ridiculously easy symbiotes could be taken care of. Then, we had the other non-crossover issue, and then we get the Hellfire Gala tie-in, which was excellent, honestly, but still. Finally, issue seven was yet another crossover issue, this one for The Last Annihilation, which spins out of Empyre, which was only good because it had Hulkling and Wiccan finally get married but other than that was just kind of there. Great. This is a good book, full of great characters, and exactly two of them have been given a chance to shine- Abigail Brand and Manifold. It feels like such a waste.

This last year of X-Men books has been so lackluster, and that's a shame. It seems the only good books are the ancillary ones, and those get cancelled. Hickman spent all of his time on X-Men setting things up for some unknown point in the future, doing tie-in issues, and screwing up Apocalypse's origin forever. The Mystique issues and the Vault issues were good, but that's about it. There's just something all-around disappointing about a good portion of the books. It's not that they're bad. They are well done, and the art is rather good. However, the problem comes in that the main books feel like they're treading water, and the good books impress and then go away. It's just a weird way of doing things, and I'm constantly disappointed by the comics.

I love the X-Men, but for some reason, after the magnificent start, things kind of went downhill. For every silver lining, there's a dark cloud. X-Men is a perfect example of that. This is a good book, but there's nothing special about it. Maybe it will get better. Maybe it will stay the same. I don't think it will become a bad book- it's not X-Corp; after all- but, I just don't think there's going to be anything special about it, and I don't see it changing very much. This is only the second or third time I've read a Gerry Duggan book, and he's perfectly fine, but I'm not exactly impressed.

I think the problem is that everything was so good when it started that it was impossible to keep that up. House Of X/Powers Of X were the first time since Morrison that the X-Men books felt new and vital. As far as a starting point, it was so amazing that once everything else wasn't reaching that level, it felt like it went downhill. X Of Swords certainly didn't get anywhere close. The Hellfire Gala had its moments- Planet-Size X-Men #1 will always be impressive; I actually went out and bought a physical copy, which I stopped doing with every X-Men book but Wolverine months ago (I got the Jean Grey Gala costume variant)- but it definitely didn't reach those HoX/PoX heights. Now time for a random tangent.

Why was Kevin Feige in X-Men #21? Like, really, why was he there? Is it just to suck up to the new boss? Why would he be important in the Marvel Universe? The only reason he is important in the real world is because of the MCU. He'd be a lower-level producer without it. So, why is he in the book? Is it so he can listen to Cyclops's story? It was such a weird moment, and it got the biggest spotlight out of all the celebrity cameos. I am not a person who believes that Feige can do no wrong because he somehow created a shared universe… that had existed for decades up until that point. It wasn't meta, it wasn't clever, it was weird, and it took me right out of the book.

Okay, tangent over.

Hickman's Avengers and Fantastic Four had good starts, but they didn't have the kind of blockbuster start his X-Men run did. Anything after that is going to be kind of disappointing, and I think that's where we are now. Nothing has come close to that beginning and the amazing stuff- Wolverine, X-Factor, Children of the Atom, Ayala's New Mutants- feel like they're in a completely different world, and they're better for it. Inferno is coming, and later this month, X-Men: Trial Of Magneto starts. I'm honestly hoping they make things better. I hope Duggan's X-Men starts to feel like something special because it has the art to be special. I want the X-Men and their books to be amazing. They just aren't.

The X-Men are my favorite books at Marvel. They're really the only Marvel books that actually mean anything- the Avengers are the jocks who are too cool for school, the Fantastic Four were '60s American exceptionalism the comic book, Spider-Man is just a nerdy dude who wears a mask to become cool, and the Hulk is the screwed up dude who either wants to either kill everyone or be all by himself all the time. The X-Men are all about civil rights, about embracing the things that make us different while realizing we're all the same. They're about acceptance. They're queer. They're about the real world and how we deal with the racism and bigotry. That's important. People need that, and Marvel doesn't really have anything else that comes close as far as real-world meaning goes. I need them to be the best, and while they certainly are- Marvel pretty much just has the X-Men books and The Immortal Hulk- they aren't where they should be.

I don't want to come back here in a few months and write another couple of pages about how disappointed I am by the X-Men books. I want to come back here and talk about how much I love them, how great they are. Hopefully, I will. Anyway, I'll come up with another thing for us to talk about soon, and we can meet back here, and you can listen to me rant. Until then, be like Mark Millar- follow me on Twitter (dude, Mark Millar follows me on the Twitter; that's not a joke, he really does). Or don't. It's all good.