Review: ‘Weapon X-Men’ #1 Is A Mixed Bag

The X-Men have been filled with those who haven’t been afraid to get their hands dirty pretty much since Giant-Size X-Men #1. In Weapon X-Men #1, a full crew of those characters get together to dive behind enemy lines.

Joe Casey, Chriscross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro, and Clayton Cowles get some of the biggest guns together.

It’s a string of bad luck for Logan. First, his target is murdered before he finds him. Then someone tries to blow him up. Then he gets drawn into yet another new team, including Cable, Chamber, Thunderbird, and Deadpool. And unknown to him, one of them are about to betray him.

(It’s Deadpool. It’s always Deadpool.)

This is a book I wanted to like. And really, with it supposedly being an ongoing, I’m going to give it more than my usual single arc. But why?

Well, Casey crafts an interesting story here. While Logan getting the hell beat out of him isn’t anything new, Casey executes it at such a pace that it’s still thrilling and interesting. The usual “getting the team together trope” is used, but moved through so quickly that you can excuse it. And the final page reveal is a blast, especially considering the tie to One World Under Doom.

Now, I have two quibbles with the story. The first is that Chamber getting drawn into the action doesn’t totally make sense outside the fact he’s one of Casey’s favorites. I don’t totally mind that — he’s one of my favorites too — but I feel like Cable recruiting him needed more justification when they dedicate three pages to it. And this team is a sausage party. There is no reason why the cast is all dudes, especially when so many characters are still off the board — why not Moonstar, Monet, Copycat, or Domino? 

Where this issue really falls short though is in the art.

I’m not sure if the issues with the character work is in Chriscross’s pencils, or Morales’s inks, but the characters are stiff and snarly. Don’t even get me started on how not a single character turns their head in a way that doesn’t look like an action figure whose head is just a degree or two too far. None of the characters really gel on the page together. Worst of all, Thunderbird’s debut on page in particular is shocking, because visually the figure makes no sense. He’s just a massive presence on the page, and he’s drawn like a blob with a head on it to do that.

There is no continuity of storytelling either.

In the opening sequence Logan goes from a hotel bar to an elevator. He presses the button for the lobby, but then gets dropped with enough force that it causes a massive explosion. I’ve never seen a hotel bar higher than the third floor, and there’s no indication that there’s any explosives to cause the massive explosion we see. The sequence makes no sense, and yes, some of it could be in the script, but the art team does not execute in any way that makes sense. But it’s a sequence that’s just one example of several that are hard and confusing to follow.

Now, Nitro’s colors are good, if a bit bright for a kill squad themed story. He does some fun stuff with it. Cowles is also doing his usual great work here- even if how the characters look doesn’t make sense, he at least ensures that the dialogue flows.

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