{"id":7743,"date":"2022-04-01T22:14:30","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T21:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7743"},"modified":"2022-04-01T22:14:30","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T21:14:30","slug":"secret-x-men-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7743","title":{"rendered":"Secret X-Men #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SECRET X-MEN #1<\/strong>
\n“The Secret X-Men”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Tini Howard<\/strong>
\nArtist: Francesco Mobili<\/strong>
\nColourist: Jesus Aburtov<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan White<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, um. This. It came out back in February and I said at the time that I was going to review it and then I completely forgot about it. And then somebody mentioned it in the comments and I remembered I hadn’t done it.<\/p>\n

Look, I’d have remembered when it showed up on Marvel Unlimited.But it’s fair to say the impact that this thing made on me was, shall we say, transitory. It vanished from memory awfully quickly. I can’t say the thought of re-reading it for this review filled me with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

The high concept is that this is a one-shot about the characters who were in the public vote for the new X-Men team, back when Marvel were promoting the Hellfire Gala, but who didn’t get in.<\/p>\n

The plot, then. Sunspot is swanning around in the Shi’ar Empire, claiming to be the leader of the X-Men in order to impress girls. So Deathbird enlists him to help defend Empress Xandra against yet another assassination attempt, and asks him to bring the X-Men to a secret location. Of course, Sunspot doesn’t have an X-Men team to bring, so he sets about calling the guys who\u00a0wanted<\/em> to be on a team. It kind of makes sense for the characters who were particularly keen to be on the team, or who feel aggrieved that they’re overlooked. You can see it for Sunspot. Maybe Marrow, who would insist she doesn’t want to be on the team, but is also Professionally Aggrieved. Tempo, though? A character who had to be needled repeatedly just to join the Marauders? Forge, who’s rushed off his feet in other books? Hmm.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yeah, I think I part company with this book at a pretty early stage, where it thinks the gimmick is cute and I think it’s irritating. But okay. That’s just the opening. What’s the story?<\/p>\n

Before Sunspot’s team can actually head off to meet with Deathbird, Gladiator shows up to announce that Deathbird has abducted Xandra. So he wants the “X-Men” to go after her too. That’s not actually a problem, since Sunspot was going to meet up with her anyway, so he just plays along. Sunspot thinks this is a great chance for them all to look good and make everyone happy, and talks the rest of the group into sticking with him.<\/p>\n

They fight off some Sidrian hunters, and follow Deathbird’s trail to a planet which isn’t the one Sunspot was expecting. There’s a secret vault, and a meta gimmick where you help them find the password by doing an acrostic (which feels really out of place in a book that’s otherwise played fairly straight).<\/p>\n

And at this point we reach the bit in the story where I don’t really follow what’s going on and kind of lose the will to figure it out. In the vault is a pre-existing Krakoan gate for some reason. The Sidri attack again and get defeated. And then … suddenly we’re all on Deathbird’s ship, so apparently the Sidri just lost and Sunspot just found Deathbird. By tracking her? By following the original instructions? I don’t know. It’s an absolutely haywire jump in the action and reads unbelievably badly.<\/p>\n

The upshot of all this seems to be that Deathbird and Xandra are testing people to see who they can trust. They don’t trust Gladiator, but since the team came as X-Men, they’re apparently allies for the future. Oh, and the Sidri, who were the only threat in the whole story? Deathbird hired them, to provide a bit of challenge. Then, out of nowhere, a Sidri attacks and teleports Deathbird away. Xandra erases everyone’s memory of that bit so that the X-Men go home thinking they won. I guess? Because what did they win, really?<\/p>\n

It’s quite pretty, I guess. Nice enough colouring. Sunspot generally comes across as quite charming, though he feels a touch off model a lot of the time. The one-off team uniforms are quite cool.<\/p>\n

But it’s an issue so irritating I had to force myself to pay attention just to re-read it. Just an absolute joyless chore. I kind of get what this is trying to do, I guess – it’s supposed to be a kind of empty calories romp with a bit of foreshadowing for future plots about the Shi’ar Empire – but it’s simply no fun at all.<\/p>\n

No wonder I erased it from memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SECRET X-MEN #1 “The Secret X-Men” Writer: Tini Howard Artist: Francesco Mobili Colourist: Jesus Aburtov Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Jordan White So, um. This. It came out back in February and I said at the time that I was going to review it and then I completely forgot about it. And then somebody mentioned it […]<\/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-7743","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\/7743","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=7743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7745,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions\/7745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}