All-New X-Men

Comic Book Review: X-Men Blue #1 by Bunn, Molina, Buffagni, Milla, & Caramagna – Nostalgia reigns supreme in this dull debut

April 12, 2017 by krisis

Nostalgia is a tricky thing.

When we’re young, nostalgia allows us to unlock something secret and cool that we missed out on. I remember being so excited about flare-legged jeans and crazy-patterned polyester shirts in the mid-90s when the late 60s and early 70s were cool again.

They spoke to me because I felt like a kid out of time. I was more interested in actually picking out clothing than ever before. And, that hippy-influenced fashion let me into my own interpretation of glam rock tinged with goth, full of vinyl, flowy black shirts, and body glitter.

I’m not sure that anyone who lived through those fashions the first time was as eager as I was to see their return. Nostalgia is different when we’re older. Some elements might recall warm, fuzzy, pleasant feelings of youth, but we don’t get to pick and choose what our collective culture decides to recycle. Other throwbacks bombard us with the awful trends and noise we winced and tried to avoid back in the day.

For every transformative piece of nostalgia that is filled with a fresh inspiration, there are a hundred old things re-inflated like ancient hot-air balloons. These husks totter up into the the cultural horizon for a second flight, tattered and looming over our shoulders. They crowd out the sky for the young and old alike, strangling new ideas. Sometimes it feels like they even blot out the sun. X-Men_Blue_2017_0001

Nostalgia can be dangerous to the young and old alike. It can crowd the horizon of new art, of fresh fashion and music. And, if you’re not careful, it becomes a self-sustaining feedback loop, constantly comforting you with copies of copies of copies of something that once made you feel something – or, worse, something that made other people feel a feeling that you’re eager to capture for your own.

Nostalgia is a tricky, dangerous thing. If you’re not careful, it can suffocate you.

X-Men Blue (2017) #1

Written by Cullen Bunn with line art by Jorge Molina (A-story) and Matteo Buffagni (B-story) with color art by Matt Milla and lettering by VC’s Joe Caramagna. Primary cover by Arthur Adams and Peter Steigerwald.

CK Says: Skip it!

X-Men Blue #1 is part of Marvel’s relaunch of its full line of mutant books, but this one is not like the others. Rather than inject new life into a battered franchise, it seeks to hook readers through nostalgia for a group of tired characters that weren’t even that great the first time around.

(And, that’s before we get to the crushingly stupid back-up story.)

On the surface, X-Men Blue is a zippy, one-shot “high adventure on the high seas” story with a recognizable team of the five original X-Men tackling some familiar foes. That surface level is going to play out fine for a lot of readers. It will push some nostalgia buttons for some and “access to nostalgia” buttons for others.

Both sets of readers might be forgetting that these original mutants have never been the most interesting team. What was so special about them back in the 1960s (and in many flashbacks to the period) was using these every-teen archetypes to uncover a world filled with vivid villains paired with disarmingly plain everyday discrimination.

Why invite them to the present day, aside from nostalgia? It was the handiwork of Beast in 2013 to try to show Cyclops how far he had strayed from when they were as wide-eyed teens. That’s a great idea for a single story, but editorially no one seems sure why the characters are still around other than the fact that a few thousand people keep buying their book.

Author Cullen Bunn has little to say on the topic in this first issue. He’s been his best at Marvel writing Magneto for the past few years, but X-Men Blue doesn’t yet have the morally gray allure of those stories (though, it would be a brilliant way to re-contextualize these characters). [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: X-Men Blue #1 by Bunn, Molina, Buffagni, Milla, & Caramagna – Nostalgia reigns supreme in this dull debut

Definitive X-23 Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The X-23 comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated January 2018 with titles scheduled for release through August 2018.

X-23 is Wolverine’s clone, but in her own way she’s Marvel’s Harley Quinn.

That’s because, like Quinn, X-23 originated in a medium other than comics. She was created for the cartoon X-Men Evolution by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, who would also oversee her comics journey for half a decade in a pair of mini-series and on two teams.

Kyle and Yost’s material is stellar from beginning to end. Their run on X-23 often explored the theme of her savagery – how she was raised to be a perfect assassin without being a person.

Afterwards, Author Marjorie Liu took X-23 over for two years for her first solo ongoing title. Liu focused more on X-23’s human side and her internal emotional life, forging connections with Gambit and Jubilee.

Unfortunately, her development goes on a detour from that point.

With the cancellation of her title in the midst of a reshuffling of the X-Men line, X-23 was shipped to Avengers Academy for a year. Christos Gage extended Liu’s work, but it was in a crowded team title. Afterward, Dennis Hopeless picked up X-23 and other Academy cast members for Avengers Arena – where she was cast mostly an unintentional villain.

After the end of Arena, X-23 is adopted by All-New X-Men, weirdly filling out the young cast of the 1960s original X-Men with a Wolverine analog. She’s mostly played for big action beats and romance, but her development finally gets back on track in the aftermath of Wolverine’s death in Wolverines.

Finally, in the wake of Secret Wars, X-23 regained a solo title for the first time in half a decade – this time taking on the mantle of Wolverine (!) while also continuing in All-New X-Men. [Read more…] about Definitive X-23 Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Collecting New Mutants, Generation X, & Young X-Men comic books as graphic novels

Follow Marvel’s youngest mutants in New Mutants, Generation X, Academy X, Young X-Men, and Wolverine & The X-Men comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated January 2023 with titles scheduled for release through April 2023.

X-Men launched as a comic book about a school of mutants, but by the early 80s it was clear that a team written by Chris Claremont and featuring the likes of Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine had outgrown being students.

While the injection of the occasional teen like Kitty Pryde or Jubilee into the team would briefly revive the scholastic concept, there was no getting around that Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters was neither a school nor filled with many youngsters.

Marvel’s solution to this was to capitalizing on the X-Men’s massive popularity to have Chris Claremont launch a second X-Men series and a third wave of new mutants. The book was called, appropriately, The New Mutants. It launched in 1983 with a prestige graphic novel followed by a series that ran for 100 issues.

New Mutants was meant to bring the X-Men back to their roots – a team of teens who had just discovered their powers, as mentored by Professor Xavier. As it turns out, even though comics characters don’t need to age, comics about teens have the same problem as TV shows about high school students – eventually there’s a need for them to learn something and eventually graduate! The New Mutants transformed into the more-proactive X-Force (see Guide to X-Force), once again leaving the line without a school-based title.

Marvel rectified that in 1994, when the Phalanx Covenant crossover launched Generation X – a fourth generation of new mutants. This generation was based in Emma Frost’s Massachusetts academy as mentored by her and Banshee – long-since retired from active adventuring.

Generation X ran through 2001, when Grant Morrison’s arrival shook up the entire X-Men line. Morrison repopulated the world with mutants, spawning new characters with bizarre powers at every page turn. The concept of the school moved back into their title, the newly-christened flagship of New X-Men. However, that book was mostly focused on the core of teachers at Xavier’s school, so Marvel launched a new volume of New Mutants alongside it where the former New Mutants could find even-newer mutants to recruit to the school. This was the fifth genesis of new mutants, which became codified as New X-Men: Academy X. Academy X was the first real “school book” that kept the high school experience centered throughout its run and between team adventures. continued through several other flagship X-Men runs and transform into Young X-Men in 2008.

By that point, the effects of House of M meant there hadn’t been any new mutants in several years of publishing, and the X-line was under the direction to keep the mutant population contained. That changed again in 2010 after the end of “Second Coming” with the arrival of Generation Hope – the first of a sixth wave of new mutants.

Generation Hope subsequently was consolidated into Wolverine & The X-Men, which combined Academy X students with members of the new sixth genesis. That continued into Marvel Now, which would add some familiar faces to the sixth genesis – the original five X-Men, plucked from their Silver Age run as teens and brought to the modern day! This familiar cast of old new mutants took the spotlight off of the sixth class, although we’d continue to see new sixth class members as late as 2017 with a revived Generation X (with the original team as mentors).

Finally, the advent of the Age of Krakoa in 2019 began the seventh class of new mutants. This generation of mutants was different than what came before, because they arrived in a mutant society that promised them everything – health, happiness, and safety. However, that brought with it challenges unique to the mutant world, including many old foes intent on corrupting these young mutants to their own aims.