Review: ‘X-Men’ #1 Nearly Hits The Mark

The long awaited (but maybe not anticipated) relaunch of Marvel’s X-Men is here, and it’s one to have a lot of mixed feelings about just from X-Men #1.

Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Marte Gracia and Clayton Cowles launch the X-Men From The Ashes era here.

The world hates and fears mutantkind again. That doesn’t matter to Scott Summers as he leads his team on a rescue mission for one of their own. But what this squad might be about to discover is that there’s a haunting mystery for the entirety of the X-Men.

I said I was looking to this era with cautious optimism. This issue didn’t pay it completely off, but it did at least give me enough to continue to be optimistic. The plot is thin- it’s a mixture of two relatively common X-Men plots. MacKay does at least avoid the “putting the team together” trope, but uses the base tour and the rescue mission that we’ve seen plenty of times in X-Men. So plot-wise, I was pretty cool on this.

Where MacKay really shines is in the character interactions. Beast struggles with his future self’s actions. Magik and Juggernaut have developed a sibling-like rivalry. Idie and Quentin fight like exes. It’s all very entertaining, and by focusing so much here, he uses the tropes as a storytelling tool, not a crutch.

I like Stegman and Mayer’s work here. Their character designs mostly land; Juggernaut is awkward and Cyclops definitely feels younger than he actually is. Otherwise, the new costumes are fun, and give the characters a great look that has the classic hallmarks of each character’s visual. The storytelling is clean and easy to follow, and the action is incredibly dynamic.

Gracia has grown tons as a color artist. He still plays with light and shadow. Now though, he matches palette with the line artist’s style and makes sure not to overwhelm them. A few panels in particular are just plain great.

X-Men #1 is available now from Marvel Comics.