Review: ‘Original X-Men’ Dares To Ask Why, Then Fails To Answer The Question

This week, the future of the X-Men was revealed by the past. Unfortunately, Original X-Men was the best example to date of Marvel Comics’ worst trend.

Christos Gage, Greg Land, Jay Leisten, Frank D’Armata, and Clayton Cowles tell the last tale of the original five.

The original X-Men have been home from their sojourn in the future for months now. Unfortunately, life for the X-Men is never boring, as the Phoenix recruits them to fight a horrific threat in the multiverse. Will these young X-Men succeed in fighting their older, corrupted selves, or will this universe’s Dark Phoenix destroy them all?

Frankly, this is one of the few comics in the 7 years that I’ve been reviewing them that I’ve outright wished I hadn’t. This is easily the worst comic published by a major publisher this year, and it has little to no redeeming value. It’s nothing but a nostalgia grab, meant to grab the attention of completists, and not a successful one at that.

Gage is at his worst a competent and entertaining writer, and at his best, I feel he’s pretty good. In this issue though, the dialogue is plodding and heavy. The exposition that opens the issue is clunky and drags on forever. None of the characters are really in character, and a few of them really have nothing to do- I challenge you to read this book and tell me one thing that the main Beast did. Even worse, it did nothing that hadn’t already been done by Bendis, Hopeless or Bunn nearly a decade ago. The villain reveal was groan inducing and then the ending shows the reader that the entire issue was just a 40 page ad for another story.

Land has gained a reputation that I might now even have to describe at this point. His obvious tracing is the point of many jokes amongst the fandom. In this issue, it’s not just present, but oppressive- he even traces his own most famous cover. That’s not the only problem with the art. His layouts don’t make a lot of sense, multiple pages are incredibly cluttered. Even the straightforward moments don’t work, such as when Beast throws up (there’s something he did!) and the vomit doesn’t look like any liquid I’ve even seen in my life. Land is also absolutely not the right artist for a story about multiple versions of the same character meeting.

D’Armata and Cowles both do incredibly competent work. Unfortunately that’s all overshadowed by everything else that went wrong in the issue.

In short, this issue was a complete failure. The writing was awkward. The art was just difficult to read. I genuinely cannot find any redeeming value for it, or anything additive that it offered. That might be the worst part of it all.

Original X-Men is available now from Marvel Comics.