Oh pre-Marvel NOW Rick Remender, where for art thou? Once you were my favorite writer with titles like Venom and Uncanny X-Force knocking it out of the park each and every issue, you gave us fun and emotional stories, great character interaction and one of the most gut wrenching comic books I’ve ever read, so what the hell happened to you?! The first story arc of what’s supposedly the flagship book of the Marvel NOW initiative is so full of nonsensical bullshit Im surprised it wasn’t by Dan Slott!
The story begins with Wolverine holding a funeral for Charles Xavier, who recently died at the hands of a Phoenix controlled Cyclops with his many X-Men. Right off the bat I couldn’t help but cringe at this. Death in comic books is such a pointless every day occurrence I just can’t buy any of these characters even giving a crap when one of them supposedly dies. Especially a character like Xavier who’s died like a dozen times by now.
At the same time, Cyclops is visited by his brother Alex who scolds him for his actions while in possession of the Phoenix Force. As he’s leaving, Thor and Captain America both approach him and offer him the leadership position of a new hybrid Avengers/X-Men team in order to improve the public opinion on mutants. Again, several things here don’t make sense.
Why would they pick Alex of all people? While my knowledge of the character is some what limited, from what I’ve heard of him he’s always been in Cyclops’s shadow and has never lead a team. So why pick him to command something as important as the Avengers Unity Squad? Caps reason for picking Alex over some one like Wolverine is Wolverines dark and violent past. But picking the brother of the guy who took over the entire planet and nearly destroyed it is a much better choice?
The little meeting of nonsensicalness is quickly interrupted when a mutant attacks New York using his earthquake creating powers for what ever reason that’s never really explained and manages to destroy a good part of the city and kill a lot of people. Here we get the stupidest scene of the entire goddamn story.
Thor proclaims that the reason he’s ignored the mutant problem all these years is because he thought man kind would be able to overcome their prejudice because they’re noble and fair beings….. Has your head really been up your ass all this time Thor?! Fair? Noble?! What a load of bull, human beings have never, ever, EEEEVVVVEEEERRRRR, shown any remorse for the things they’ve done to mutants and even less desire to live with them.
These are the same people who were perfectly fine with letting the government create giant robots attack and kill mutants on the streets even though they most likely didn’t do anything to hurt anyone and were just minding their own damn business. This is just the tip of the ice berg of what humans have done to mutants; there are plenty of other terrible things they’ve done.
In fact the whole prejudice against mutants makes absolutely no sense anymore. Like why aren’t people fearful of Norse gods and super heroes in general? They certainly made a big deal with the whole public VS super hero thing with Civil War even though that storyline was forced as well since super heroes level entire cities on a daily basis but a few dead kids dying one day is suddenly a tragedy.
Hell, why don’t people ever have a problem with Thor?! He’s a Norse god, one of the many that roams the planet freely and can destroy the entire planet! Why doesn’t anyone give them any crap, especially after Fear Itself where all of Paris died! Yes, the Grey Gargoyle enhanced with Asgardian magic turned all of Paris into stone and murdered EVERYONE in it! Oh but mutants, those guys are evil! What a load of bull.
Another part that made me want to wipe my ass with this is when an injured man calls Alex a hero and tells him he doesn’t care that he’s a mutant and is thankful there are heroes like him around…… THEN WHY DOESN’T ANYONE REACT TO THE X-MEN IN THIS WAY?!?
The X-Men also helped stop plenty of threats in the past including Cyclops in the final battle of AvX. Cyclops even created a new team of X-Men created for the very purpose of showing mutants as heroes before AvX happened in the pages of Uncanny X-Men after Schism and Regenesis finished. But screw that! Mutants have always been evil, because we need them to be.
And then we finally see who our evil villain for the story is, and its Red Skull who takes Xavier’s brain, puts it into his own head and begins using its powers to wipe out all mutants because he seems them as a cancer that must be cut out…. Wait what?
Now you can debate this one with, and yes I know the Nazis did actively kill people who had mental and physical handicaps because they saw them as genetically unfit and as lesser beings. But here is my counter argument, who in their right mind would think that people capable of shooting lasers out of their eyes, control metal with their minds and do all sorts of awesome stuff like that would be genetically inferior or lesser beings?
The Nazis were all about creating the fastest, smartest and strongest human beings possible and thought that genetics played a key role in achieving this goal. So I have to ask, why is Red Skull against the mutants? If anything he should be siding with them since they are obviously superior in every way possible to us regular humans.
Now even with the story being complete bull, you’d think that Remender the guy who writes characters better than anyone at Marvel could at least pull that off right? Well heres the short version, Wolverine is just there, Thor is just there, Alex is the cliché hero who doesn’t want to be the hero, Wanda is just there and Rogue is a bitch.
In fact, this story made me want to strangle Rogue with some barbed wire. Her sole character trait in this story is to be sad about Xavier’s death and blame Wanda for everything wrong in the world. She basically says that all of this is Wanda’s fault and she has no right to even place some flowers or show some respect for Xavier at his grave.
Yeah Rogue, you sure showed us all how you stuck by Xavier when you and 80% of the X-Men all switched over to Cyclops’s side once he took over the world (sarcasm). She continues to blame Wanda for all of these events and when Wanda calls her out on how Cyclops’s actions were entirely unjustified, Rogue actually defends him, wow.
But again this shouldn’t surprise me seeing as how Rogue along with many of the X-Men who defected was perfectly happy to just sit back let 5 ego maniacal psychopaths with the power to rival God rule the world and kill anyone they wanted while they sat with their thumbs up their asses as long as more mutants were created.
Not only is Rogue an annoying bitch here, she’s a goddamn hypocrite and she has absolutely no right to pretend like she actually follows Xavier’s example and his teachings when she was able to throw them away so easily before much less condemn others for not following them.
The only character who gets an interesting trait added to him is Captain America. The way Remender portrays him here is that he has a prejudice against mutants himself. They conflict with his old world views but since he’s a nice guy he tries to overcome because he knows it’s not right. Now this is a great idea and makes me respect Cap a whole lot more than I ever have but again, not enough is done with it and it’s swept under the rug fairly quickly
Can some one explain to me what Wanda’s powers are please? I tried to read up on them in the Marvel Wiki and all I understood is that some demon gave them to her when she was born. But what are her natural powers? They can’t be magic use because Doctor Strange, a regular human can use magic and is the world’s most powerful sorcerer. So again I must ask, can some one please explain what her powers are?
Not even the art can redeem this one. John Cassaday coming back to an on-going monthly series after about 10 years was a big deal. I was excited for it myself since his art on Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run was nothing short of fantastic. Well here he was barely given any time or didn’t give a rats ass because the art is unbelievably mediocre.
Most of the facial expressions look bizarre, there’s one panel where Wolverine is foaming at the mouth and he looks exactly like zombie Wolverine from Marvel Zombies. The following panel we see him attack Red Skull and he looks like he’s walking on all fours like a monkey.
None of the big moments in the book feel big, they feel tiny and meaningless. The only panel that impressed me was the last page of issue #1 where Red Skull is holding Xavier’s brain in his hand and you can see Xavier’s skull open on a table. Besides that, the art never managed to wow me and honestly it was so mundane I spent more time reading the text and actively avoided looking at the art.
In conclusion this comic blows. Now only is the prejudice painfully idiotic at this point, the characters are either completely pointless to the over all plot, speak random non sensical bullshit or are hypocritical bastards. If it wasn’t for that one moment of brilliance with Caps prejudice, this one would get the worst possible score.
FINAL VERDICT: F+
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