X-Men: Deadly Genesis
I haven’t read an X-Men comic since the unintelligible mess that followed Grant Morrison’s departure from the flagship title. And that was a while ago.
It’s odd to think of the Avengers being the biggest brand Marvel currently have, considering the way their mutant line has dominated the company for twenty-odd years. With the cartoon and then the movies it seemed they were also the highest-profile property beyond the source material too.
And then came Spider-Man, and the Scotsman’s departure, and the next thing you know Brett Ratner’s cocked up the gravy train and even Captain America (Captain America?) is kicking your arse in the Diamond sales chart.
Funny, but I’ve never been the biggest X-Men fan. I’ve never disliked them, but I can’t say I’d rank them in the top ten, maybe even top twenty of characters or titles. But I’ve read a lot of their comics over the years, mostly thanks to dear friend Triggi and the British reprint titles he bought through the 90s.
Outside of pressed trees, I enjoyed the cartoon for what it was, and went nuts for the first two films. Thanks to a lack of reverence for the Claremont years (just never really got his work, I suppose, which so informed the X-Men’s world that it probably explains why I’ve never rated them all that highly) I wasn’t horrified by Morrison’s take. The opposite, really. So there was no way to be anything but disappointed with what followed, and after a short time I dropped the title. I wasn’t as taken by the Whedon stuff as some (although the art was very pretty), but then I don’t quite understand the Kitty Pryde fetish readers who are slightly older than me seem to have.
After spending about three hundred words telling you about why I find the X-Men a bit meh, imagine my surprise that recently I’ve been missing them. Because there really is a unique atmosphere to Xavier’s team. More often than not the soap-operatics are cringe-worthy, the dialogue (for the international characters in particular) awful, the reoccurring situations tiresome (the Savage Land again?) and worst of all, the continuity impossibly convoluted even in an industry that thrives on minutiae of detail.
Of course, you take that all together and there’s a familiarity to all of that, something that plays to the mindset of someone who, for example, spends decades reading the same damn kids’ stuff over and over. The X-Men are like super-hero comfort food (well, insofar as super-hero comics are all comfort-eating of a kind), everything you’re addicted to in one easy package.
I picked up X-Men: Deadly Genesis on impulse. I mean, the aftermath of House of M wasn’t so interesting to me that I need to know what happened next, and further twists to Summers family history isn’t exactly compulsive, but damn if Ed Brubaker hasn’t earned some credit thanks to his exceptional work on Daredevil.
Turns out, the collection is exactly what’s needed to get me back into the X-Men. Brubaker’s talented enough to sidestep the annoying pitfalls usually associated with the characters (although, great big FAIL for regional accents), writing a pretty straightforward mutant adventure. It’s far more traditional than Morrison’s take, a lot more nostalgic, but still streamlined enough for modern sensibilities. Nothing hugely consequential happens (though the marketing material wants you to think so) besides Banshee’s death (but come on, did people really freak out about that? An X-Man dying? Seriously?), and that’s OK because all we put our money down for Beast being smart, Wolverine being stealthy knife guy, and everyone else standing round looking angsty. Professor Xavier comes across as a bit of a dick, but come on, he sticks teenagers in leather and makes them fight. He is a bit of a dick.
All-in-all, a comfortable comicky read.
