So here we go again.<\/p>\n
This time around,\u00a0Extraordinary X-Men<\/em> is the flagship of the X-books, which is to say that it’s the one that actually has the X-Men in it, as opposed\u00a0than the\u00a0time travelling teens or a rebranded X-Force. \u00a0And so it’s the book that has the task of dealing head on with the new status quo, in which the Terrigen Mists are empowering Inhumans while wiping out the mutants.\u00a0 I wrote last week about why that’s a pretty bad idea<\/a>, and\u00a0I may come back in another post to look in more detail\u00a0at\u00a0how it messes\u00a0up the formula\u00a0that the X-Men’s popularity\u00a0was built on. \u00a0No point repeating all that again here; you can take it as read for now.<\/p>\n What’s really striking about this book, though, is how\u00a0traditional it is in\u00a0pretty much every other respect.<\/p>\n In some ways\u00a0that isn’t\u00a0so surprising. \u00a0Aside from being an olive branch to sceptical fans,\u00a0it’s also a sensible decision – if it’s meant to be\u00a0a radical new status quo, then a\u00a0nice familiar X-Men team makes a better\u00a0contrast. \u00a0And\u00a0although writer Jeff Lemire has done some excellent and eccentric comics like\u00a0Sweet Tooth<\/em>,\u00a0Trillium<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Underwater Welder<\/em>, his superhero work for\u00a0DC has been\u00a0fairly conventional.<\/p>\n Still,\u00a0alongside the dodgy new status quo, there’s a back-to-basics feel. \u00a0Not only are we returning to\u00a0the X-Men proper, who got pretty much ignored in favour of spin-off teams during the Bendis era, but\u00a0we’re back with an actual team, instead of the open-ended sprawl that’s been the norm this century. \u00a0And that\u00a0team is packed with the old faithful characters: Storm, Iceman, Colossus, Magik, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey and Wolverine. \u00a0Yes, it’s the teenage Jean and the Old Man Logan\u00a0<\/em>version of Wolverine, but it’s still those characters. \u00a0The\u00a0wider institute is still there – now relocated to Limbo to avoid the Mists – but these guys are the X-Men proper.<\/p>\n A\u00a0new direction and a smaller core cast\u00a0– and, let’s face it, the contrast with the\u00a0diffuse meandering that preceded it\u00a0– give this a focus that’s been lacking for many a year. \u00a0Lemire has a pretty good\u00a0sense of the characters’ voices, and\u00a0there’s\u00a0something a bit Claremontian about\u00a0it all (without taking on his personal tics), which is no bad thing. \u00a0Humberto Ramos’\u00a0jagged exaggerations are a bit less traditional, but hell,\u00a0at least he\u00a0ensures the visual tone is about energy and excitement, not morose brooding about the death of a species.<\/p>\n The A-plot is basic, because it’s a frame on which to hang\u00a0a gathering of the cast and an introduction of the new status quo. \u00a0One problem\u00a0with the Terrigen Mists is that they aren’t\u00a0actually an antagonist, so Lemire sensibly decides to wheel out Mr Sinister, as a villain who’s all about the future of the mutant race. \u00a0It’s a shame that Kieron Gillen’s inventive\u00a0revamp hasn’t\u00a0stuck, but the trad version\u00a0makes sense for\u00a0his role here. \u00a0Anything that threatens to wipe out mutants is a major spanner in his life’s\u00a0work. \u00a0So he’s\u00a0been trying to save mutantkind\u00a0in\u00a0his usual\u00a0style:\u00a0demented mad scientist experiments. \u00a0Ultimately, he\u00a0decides\u00a0that\u00a0mutants are a lost cause and he’s\u00a0going to get with the programme and get behind the Inhumans. \u00a0All very simple – and the final fight with a Cyclops clone feels\u00a0contrived, not least because there’s a false-drama cliffhanger which sets him up as the real thing, only to brush it aside in the opening pages of the next issue. \u00a0But\u00a0it’s about getting a character to go out there and serve as a mouthpiece for the new status quo, and Sinister’s fine for\u00a0that role (save perhaps that he’s not much of an A-list threat in this story).<\/p>\n