Dark X-Men #1 // Review
Things aren’t going too terribly well for superhuman mutants. There was a big mess at the Hellfire Gala earlier this summer, and now a rather large group of remaining mutants have found refuge in a rather suspicious-looking embassy in Manhattan. Things are going to get worse before they can get better in Dark X-Men #1. Writer Steve Foxe opens a new chapter for Marvel mutants in an issue drawn by Jonas Scharf and colorist Frank Martin. Foxe and company develop the drama in a variety of different interesting directions in the opening of a new chapter for a select group of beloved X-Men characters.
Madelyne Pryor’s relationship with Jean Grey has been really, really complicated. Now that Grey has died, Pryor feels a great responsibility to act as Jean would have. She’s going to look for mutants who might still be around. She’s going to offer them sanctuary. It’s what Jean would have done. She doesn’t have access to a Cerebro computer to seek them out...but since she has access to more mystic means, she’s got the same kind of power to locate those who might be in trouble as popular sentiment continues to grow against mutantkind.
The stories of everyone involved in the emergent team of X-Men are...really, really convoluted on more levels than the mind can safely imagine. Given how tortured and twisted these characters have been throughout the years from many different creative teams...Foxe actually does a pretty good job of honoring what’s gone on in the characters’ pasts while carefully constructing a new path for them. This isn’t an easy balance to strike with characters who have such tediously long backstories. The drama holds in a very well-directed first issue for a new series that cleverly blends mutant drama with horror fantasy themes.
Scharf is really, really good with big crowd shots. Not many artists can cram a huge number of characters into a panel and make it all look coherent. All of them look so very, very sharp and distinct on the page. And above all else, Madelyne looks suitably heroic as the central focus of a team that plays to the darker edge of the Marvel mutant pantheon. In many ways, Scharf and Martin make Pryor look gorgeous and almost regal as the leader of the new team. It’s cool to see her at the center of the new series.
The delicate balance between the supernatural and the social is really, really difficult to maintain. Foxe and company run the risk of leaning a bit more in the direction of the supernatural with the opening issue, but this IS Dark X-Men, so it’s totally understandable. The challenge moving forward is going to lie in making certain that there’s enough of an X-component to the series to keep it grounded in the appeal that has worked so well for these characters over the decades. It’s not easy. The past few decades are littered with forgettable X-titles.
