What do I follow up with after stating that "Comics Should Be Less Mainstream"? Why a review of Marvel's newest #1 book Wolverine and the X-Men! Here's the thing about this book, it has so much production value to it that it can't fail and its really not that bad. Mostly because it's ripping off television and film and has a well known artist, but at the end of the day no matter how much I didn't like it, it still wasn't that bad compared to other books out there. So why nit-pick at it so much? Well it's kind of like that band that's trying to put on a show rather than just being genuine and that's what it boils down to, it didn't seem genuine. The book begins with Headmaster Logan talking to Xavier about the school and basically recapping the recent events. The big problem here is that Xavier gives him the dumbest advice almost to mock himself and he the worst of it is, he talks to Logan as if he were a child. Apparently Jason Aaron didn't get the memo that Logan is older than dirt and that makes him older than Charles which Charles already knew.After this touching scene in which Charles gets hit up for money, Wolverine gets ready for the first day of school and a city inspection. Why they would do both at the same time is illogical to me, but I'm sure it was needed for the plot to be interesting! Its a perfect example of convenient story telling, that is to say something that is written into the story so that something else can happen but has no real grounds to be there.
As Logan heads to the front of the building he passes by the love of his life's statue of Jean Grey, which appears to be made out of solid gold... didn't he just ask Xavier for money? Now the inspection goes as such: everything that can go wrong of course does go wrong. Think of any Sci-fi show that's every had a "visit" episode in which the characters must prove that they belong there and that's 100% where the script from this issue came from. I think the recently cancelled Eureka is the best example that I can think of at the moment, but its literally something you've seen over and over before. Especially when the stop and talk to the character that's supposed to make them look good, but ends up making things worse (Que the studio audience for laughter) Now I have to point out that city inspectors are quite possible Emma and Scott checking out the school, I'm sure it will come up or be revealed in a later issue but I'm calling it right now. It's too obvious with the way the story is.
As you can probably tell me issue is with the writing. I'm just not seeing what everyone loves in Jason Aaron's writing unless no one else can see that its stacked with influences from other popular art forms. This is the man that broke up the X-Men with "Skeet Skeet Schism" and that book was serious in tone and feel. It's wasn't any good, but still it was very serious and the ending (I only read the beginning and end by the way) left Cyclops and Logan very distant. Yet here the same writer has Logan making jokes about going back to Utopia and down playing the situation of a young girl killing someone which was the breaking point for Logan leaving in the first place. Can we get some consistency in character please?
In general this book wasn't the exciting first issue it should have been. This book is kicking off new uncharted waters for the X-Men and really it felt like a return to the same old, same old. Even the art was flat and uninspired and very reminiscent of Bachalo's first run on Uncanny X-Men. I don't know what's wrong with the X-Men, but they seem very broken and this new direction of "Blue and Gold" 90's throw back isn't fixing anything. If Marvel really wants this to succeed they should probably have ended all of the other X-Men books such as: X-Men, X-Men: Legacy and Astonishing X-Men. These titles alone weaken the infrastructure that they're trying to rebuild and leaves the whole "Blue and Gold" concept just as out of touch as this book is. Also, can someone tell me which team this is? Blue or Gold?
Score: 2/5
Writer: Jason Aaron Artist: Chris Bachalo Publisher: Marvel Comics