X-Men #1: Ménage a Trois

After the frenetic, nearly breakneck pace of the HoX/PoX series, the inaugural issue of X-Men seems to move at an almost glacial pace. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was good to see the merry mutants having a bit of down time, restrengthening bonds and acting, well, like a family. God knows they’ve earned it. The whole Summers clan will be living together in one (very significant) place on the Dark Side of the Moon. Cyclops said he chose it for the view, and we do get a nice juicy glimpse of the earth hanging in the sky like an overripe fruit. Just try not to remember that the earth wouldn’t be visible from there, and you’ll be fine.

There was a flurry of fighting on the last world-bound Orchis installation (nice little throwback to the Animal-Men from Uncanny X-Men #99) and although the idea of humans willfully devolving in order to throw off mutant supremacy was amusing, it was a little heavy handed. We got a lot of great little hints about the future of the series (temporally displaced post-humans, human resurrection, scientists experimenting with machine augmentation, trouble in the Summers clan, a hinted ménage a trois) and it was extremely good to see the X-Men having a little bit of downtime to simply be together, but honestly? This was where Hickman’s writing really starts to fall down.

Hickman is great at setting up huge concepts. He’s even occasionally good at providing emotional impact (HoX #4, anyone?) but his eye and ear for character is dubious at best and it really did him a disservice, here. Why did Storm talk like a bad parody of her TAS incarnation? Why was Jean acting like a lobotomized 1960’s housewife who’s been displaced to a space station and hasn’t really noticed yet? Why did Vulcan sound like the recordings on a pull-string He-Man action figure? This issue was full of these really unintentionally jarring characterisations and they really served to pull me out of the story.
In the original minis this slightly-off tone served to create a narrative disconnect, forcing readers to ask ‘are these really the people that we know?’ Now that we have the answer to that, the dialogue just reads as awkward and off.

It was wonderful to know that human family members have a place on Karoka offshoots, but it still disturbs me that the people caught between, Cyke’s father, Jubilee’s kid, Kitty’s mom, are never really going to be welcome anywhere. But at least we know why Jubes is joining Excalibur. She can’t bring Shogo to the island. She might as well move somewhere he can live.

There’s plenty to unpack here, and I really don’t intend to damn the series so completely, or at all. There’s a lot of potential here. The art, for one thing, is truly wonderful. For another we have all of those glittering little nodules of story, spread out before us, ripe and glistening, ready to unfurl. But I really hope that, in future issues, Hickman returns to playing to his strengths. God knows he has a great many good ones. This issue contains beautiful art, seeds for a great many future stories, and some rather unfortunately bad characterisations. It’s well worth the read, however, for the world building alone.