Back to School

Like most comic book fans, I like to think of myself as having a capacity for useless facts; things like characters names, powers, backstories, motivations, favorite kind of ice cream, etc. This continuity is what keeps fanboys like me up at night (well, that, plus a 12-pack of coke and a decent sandbox game, but I digress), so believe me when I say that the X-Men are confusing as fuck.

The basic issue is in the backstory: see, normally with superpowered characters, you need to come up with some logical contrivance as to why they have powers, like they're a scientist or magic or got boned by an alien or whatever. A lot of these origin stories can limit what a character can do in terms of personality or motivation. However, with the X-Men, all the characters are mutants, and the source of their powers is just random coincidence by way of good breeding. This leaves writers the freedom to make a character exactly how they want; this also means that a writer is likely to excersize this freedom, and create new characters to fit their stories rather than use old ones. So its not surprising that withing a mere fifty years of X-Men books, there are whole lotta mutants.

Marvel has since kept the X-Men family in their little corner to play with each other and not muck about with the other kids, but recently that trend's beginning to break; and really, that's a good thing, because now we get books like todays outstanding recommendation, Wolverine and the X-Men.

The story so far: Schism happened. Cyclops, traditionally the leader of the X-Men, and Wolverine, the loose cannon badass who clashes with him, argued over what direction they should take the team. In a reversal of expectations, Cyke wants to prepare the young mutants of today for the fights they will doubtlessly have to face in a world that hates and fears them, while Wolvie believes the X-Men should educate the young freaks in how to use their powers to help and be accepted by society. The X-Men split roughly in half (each side gets four titles), with Team Cyclops staying on the sovereign mutant nation of Utopia and Team Wolverine shipping out East to the Xavier Estate in order to build the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.

You got all that?

Here is where the series Wolverine and the X-Men takes place. Only four issues of it have been published and already I love it. I love the characters, I love the writing, I love the artwork, but especially I love the fun this series has. Writer Jason Aaron, primarily known for his work on the bleak, grim, and absolutely amazing crime drama Scalped (which I'll get to later on this blog), pens an energetic, lively series that realizes the absurdities of this franchise and plays with them. The X-Men are super-powered hormone-ridden angsty teenagers who have meet aliens, cyborgs, time-travelers, and other Marvel comics absurdities. This crap is common nature to them and its hilarious to see their reactions to the weirdness that goes on in their everyday lives.

The main cast of characters besides the faculty of X-Men favorites are the students, most of whom are newcomers to the franchise and have room to develop as characters. Interestingly, four of the five main kids fall into the archetypes presented in The Breakfast Club. The jock is Kid Gladiator (son of alien soldier-turned-king and Superboy pastiche Gladiator, who is disappointed in Earth schools and they're distinct lack of punching stuff), the brain is Broo (a member of the Brood race who has split from his species' hive mind and come to Earth to learn of human behavior and whose lack of understanding is VERY evident), the basket case is Idie (a young girl who believes herself and all mutants to be monsters, particularly after she killed a few folks in combat), and the outlaw is Quentin Quire, Teenage Rioter (a powerful telepath who will cause a rebellion at the drop of a hat, less out of genuine desire to enforce change and more to get attention). The other main at this stage seems like its going to be Genesis, a young reincarnation of the mutant supervillain and Darwinism Extremist Apocalypse, who doesn't know of his heritage despite the fact that everyone else does.

Have I mentioned the artowrk yet? No? Good, I need something more to talk about. The art is fantastic. Chris Bachalo does the first three issues and makes it suitably epic and insane while still making the characters look human and relatable. Nick Bradshaw worked as a fill-in artist on issue 4, which is like if Quentin Tarantino filled in for an episode of CSI (which he did). Bradshaw's style is simple, striking, iconic, and works perfectly with the laid-back tone of the issue.

My friends (yes, I have them) have heard me rave on and on about this series, but its definately worth it. Its a goddamn fun series, looks fantastic, and keeps with the X-Men tone that's lasted for almost half a century. All four issues are available in print and digitally, and I highly recommend you give them a look. See you all again next time on My Opinion Matters!