It’s the dawn of a new era again!\u00a0No, not the last new era. \u00a0The next new era. \u00a0The colour coded one. \u00a0You know, like in 1991.<\/p>\n
Not that\u00a0a relaunch is a bad idea. \u00a0The last couple of years\u00a0have\u00a0once again sent us down the rabbit hole of mutants facing the threat of extinction, which\u00a0has been done to death. \u00a0Whether you look at it commercially or\u00a0creatively, that\u00a0direction was\u00a0well\u00a0worth abandoning. \u00a0X-Men Prime<\/em> is essentially a lead-in issue for the relaunch titles\u00a0X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue<\/em> and\u00a0Weapon X<\/em>. \u00a0But first and foremost, it exists to send a clear message that\u00a0this is going to be a back-to-basics affair. \u00a0For readers exasperated by weird\u00a0and unpromising deviations like relocating the school to Limbo, this issue aims to reassure with a selection of familiar tropes.<\/p>\n Though it’s credited to\u00a0Marc Guggenheim, Greg Pak and Cullen Bunn – the writers of\u00a0Gold<\/em>,\u00a0Blue<\/em> and\u00a0Weapon X\u00a0<\/em>respectively – this\u00a0seems to be mainly an issue #0 of\u00a0Gold<\/em>, with\u00a0set-up material for\u00a0Blue<\/em> and\u00a0Weapon X<\/em> inserted as subplots. \u00a0The main story and framing sequence, presumably written mainly by Guggenheim, and drawn by Ken Lashley,\u00a0picks up with Kitty Pryde back living in Chicago and taking up dancing again, partly\u00a0so that the book can kick off with something appropriately familiar, but also because Kitty is a character\u00a0usefully untouched by the recent direction. \u00a0True, that’s because she was packed off into space for an equally unlikely run in the cast of\u00a0Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>, but for the purposes of this story\u00a0it lets her serve as the spirit of a bygone era that the X-Men would like to recapture.<\/p>\n Storm shows up\u00a0to say that she’s quitting as leader after leading the X-Men into a pointless crossover, and she wants Kitty to come back and take up the\u00a0reins…<\/p>\n …at which point we cut\u00a0the\u00a0Weapon X<\/em> bit, which has\u00a0nothing much to do with the rest of the issue. \u00a0It’s just a freestanding scene that’s been shoved into the book on the basis that if you cut to it boldly enough, it’ll look like a subplot. \u00a0And on a first reading, that’s precisely how it reads, so fair enough, I guess.\u00a0\u00a0This bit is (presumably) by Greg Pak and Ibraim Roberson, and it’s a sequence in which the new Weapon X spokesman,\u00a0Carla, recruits Lady Deathstrike very much against her will. \u00a0Carla is nicely done, as a vaguely creepy,\u00a0condescending\u00a0manager type in weirdly formal clothes;\u00a0in plot terms she’s a\u00a0stock\u00a0one-step-ahead villain, so credit to Roberson for giving her an edge beyond that.<\/p>\n As a writer, Pak has earned the benefit of the doubt, but this isn’t\u00a0immediately compelling. \u00a0We seem to be back to characters kidnapped and pressed into service of\u00a0evil government types,\u00a0which I’ve never found especially\u00a0interesting in the past. \u00a0Lady Deathstrike is\u00a0treated as a character who might be motivated by just getting the chance to kill mutants, but\u00a0is that really her deal? \u00a0And the idea that\u00a0“no one will miss” a group of targets that includes Logan… well, I don’t get it. \u00a0Pak deserves the chance to make it work over the length of an issue rather than a cut scene, but I’m not sold yet.<\/p>\n So much for that. \u00a0What follows is Kitty wandering around the Mansion – which is still in Limbo – to check in on the X-Men and students who are still living here. \u00a0In\u00a0terms of the timeline, this doesn’t fit very neatly with the final issue of\u00a0Extraordinary X-Men<\/em>, where the X-Men seemed to have already taken a clear decision to pack up and go home. \u00a0That’s a\u00a0little bit\u00a0aggravating. \u00a0But\u00a0other than having her swing by the time travelling X-Men, which is necessary to set up\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em>, this is mainly a chance for Kitty to\u00a0renew her neglected relationships with Colossus and Magik and reflect on how the X-Men may have become a bit directionless but they still feel like home. \u00a0(Describing the inherited status quo as “unsettled” and “rudderless”, even in the specific context of the X-Men wondering what to do with themselves now that the Terrigen problem is over, feels like another\u00a0tacit\u00a0acknowledgement that the previous direction didn’t work.)<\/p>\n Oh yes,\u00a0X-Men\u00a0Blue<\/em>. \u00a0The junior team’s scene is somewhat\u00a0shoehorned in\u00a0–\u00a0Kitty does have a previous connection with the group from\u00a0Brian Bendis’s run on\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em>, but it’s pretty clear that left to his own devices Cullen Bunn would prefer not to be doing this scene, because he has a\u00a0big reveal that he wants to save for issue #1. \u00a0So what we get is a sequence which establishes that\u00a0Jean is back with the team, that she is now the leader, and that\u00a0they’re leading the X-Men\u00a0for some vague and unspecified purpose which\u00a0Jean is championing and everyone else is sceptically playing along with. \u00a0Beyond that, everyone has to talk around the plot, and\u00a0there’s some stuff trying to\u00a0re-establish a romantic triangle with Scott and Warren, which is old territory.<\/p>\n It’s an extended teaser and there’s not much point trying to read\u00a0too much into it. \u00a0The scene is awkwardly integrated into the main story, because the idea is that the younger\u00a0X-Men have actually left and what seems to be them doing a\u00a0Danger Room exercise – and come to think of it, when did we last do a scene with the Danger Room? – is actually a\u00a0message on loop. \u00a0Except that a few pages earlier there were thought balloons. \u00a0You can rationalise this as an unsignalled\u00a0flashback\u00a0which is then integrated into the main\u00a0timeframe but it reads a bit strangely.<\/p>\n Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Kitty accepts the offer to\u00a0lead the X-Men, persuades Storm to stick around, and relocates the mansion from Limbo to… Central Park?<\/p>\n Lashley’s Kitty is rather severe, but the idea of putting her in charge is potentially quite a smart move. \u00a0Guggenheim is trying to send the signal here that this is going to be a back to basics X-Men title, but without being a slavish retread of what went before. \u00a0Kitty hasn’t been in this role before, and showing her as the\u00a0student who graduated to leader\u00a0allows the story to present itself as more of a faithful\u00a0progression of\u00a0the traditional X-Men era. \u00a0As for moving the school to the middle of New York, well, that’s new – and\u00a0probably to be welcomed if it gives the team more\u00a0of a chance to interact with the real world.<\/p>\n There are a range of reasons for Marvel to be pursuing this direction. \u00a0They’re coming off a\u00a0hugely misconceived storyline that\u00a0gives rise to a need to reassure the\u00a0audience; they’ve also seen\u00a0a similar approach doing well for DC. \u00a0And frankly, after years of misery, we could use a more optimistic take on the X-Men that lays off the extinction and gloom, and plays up the idea that the mutants could also be the future – a side of the concept that’s lain dormant pretty much since Grant Morrison left.<\/p>\n A\u00a0straightforward retread of the classic X-Men set-up wouldn’t work, and not just because it would be\u00a0repetition or pale imitation. \u00a0The\u00a0Claremont era largely saw the X-Men hiding out in their mansion, with\u00a0a cast the size of an extended family. \u00a0They had a dream of a world where mutants and humans lived\u00a0together but no real positive plan of action to bring it about. \u00a0They tried to improve the public profile of mutants by doing some good deeds and\u00a0dealing with mutant terrorists, but\u00a0for the most part, the X-Men’s plan to deliver Xavier’s dream\u00a0in the 70s and 80s was to\u00a0carve out a safe haven and wait for better days to come.<\/p>\n But that’s not how\u00a0people do it in 2017. \u00a0In the\u00a0modern age, the mutants should be demanding\u00a0the right to take their place in the world, not hiding away from it. \u00a0This is simply a matter of keeping the metaphor up to date and fit for purpose.\u00a0 There are decent stories to be done with that approach, and they’re better done by placing the X-Men\u00a0and their school more firmly in the real world. \u00a0Whether any of the upcoming\u00a0stories are actually going in that direction,\u00a0or whether the X-Men are simply going to be plugged into the Avengers’ role of being superheroes with a nice house in Manhattan, is another question. \u00a0 Plonking a bloody great mansion in\u00a0the middle of Central Park does seem pretty confrontational, though. \u00a0Time will tell whether we’re going to run with that or just pretend it isn’t a problem.<\/p>\n On its own terms this is an okay story, but\u00a0then it’s got to integrate two largely unrelated\u00a0set-ups for other books, one of which seems like it doesn’t want to be there either. \u00a0In terms of what it signals for a direction of the books… well,\u00a0even if it’s just trad X-Men, that’s still got to be a\u00a0step in the right direction compared with the Terrigen fiasco, hasn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s the dawn of a new era again!\u00a0No, not the last new era. \u00a0The next new era. \u00a0The colour coded one. \u00a0You know, like in 1991. Not that\u00a0a relaunch is a bad idea. \u00a0The last couple of years\u00a0have\u00a0once again sent us down the rabbit hole of mutants facing the threat of extinction, which\u00a0has been done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3733,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions\/3733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}