X-Men Forever Volume 1
Creative Staff:
Story: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Tom Grummett
Inks: Cory Hamscher
What They Say:
Comics icon and New York Times bestselling writer Chris Claremont returns to his legendary run with X-Men: Forever! The shockwaves after the death of Magneto are still reverberating all over the world. Attempting to heal the rift between man and mutant kind, Professor Xavier volunteers his X-Men to go on a mission to capture Magneto’s sole remaining Acolyte, Fabien Cortez! But with Nick Fury – and the entire world – watching over their shoulders, the stakes have never been higher for Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Gambit, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Storm, Beast, and Professor X. With Tom Grummet bringing Claremont’s vision to the page, this landmark series is packed with enough surprises and twists to shake the X-Men mythos to its very core! Collects X-Men Forever #1-5.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While growing up reading comics, I was more of a DC person for the longest time, but my Marvel experiences were mostly just Star Wars. It was only in the early 80’s that I ended up being drawn into the X-Men books, just after Rogue joined in Uncanny X-Men in the #170’s, that I became a fan and read for quite a few years. The series was the backbone of my enjoyment of the Marvel Universe, but I was one of those that left in the 90’s when Chris Claremont left the X-books and the artists took over most of the writing duties. To me, at that time, it felt like too significant of a loss in terms of story and direction for me to want to continue on. I ended up leaving comics altogether for quite a few years not long after that, so the discover in the last year or so that Claremont was brought back for a 2009 alternate timeline series where he and Tom Grummett could tell the stories he intended to follow through on, but with significant changes along the way freed from corporate requirements, the result is X-Men Forever. And it really does feel like a step back in the 90’s.
Taking place after the death of Magneto at the hands of Fabian Cortez, the title moves quickly to try and deal with this aspect of it as a very ticked off group of X-Men are going to where they think he is. Cortez isn’t given too much material to work with here as the first couple of issues work through his initial attack on the group, the screwing up of powers that he brings to the table and his takedown that has the team bringing him back to the mansion. For the X-Men, their group dynamic is definitely off for a lot of reasons, one of which is the new ever present inclusion of Nick Fury as SHIELD is looking over what the team is doing. Though there is a decent working relationship between him and Charles, the rest of the team is wary and uncertain about it and we get a lot of internalized dialogue coming up, especially since both Kitty and Kurt have to make a decision about whether to stay after the events here or return to Excalibur.
The fight with Cortez is an interesting array of quick hits as he steps out of nowhere to take down the jet first and then smaller attacks on the various team members. There are hard attacks early on, but it’s the combination of things that makes things very dangerous. When he deals with Rogue and Storm first, he causes it so that Rogue starts absorbing a lot of Storm’s memories. But he also throws things into a real curve for Rogue as the way he overloads her causes her to dump a lot of the memories/voices that have been clogging her mind for years. But she also makes it so that she knows more about Storm than ever before and they realize there are some very dangerous and mystery things going on with her that factors into events when they return to the mansion.
The really interesting fight that happens is when Cortez goes and takes a stab at an already weakened Logan and Kitty gets involved. Because of the way Cortez’s powers work, it ends up screwing both of them up and Kitty even ends up with one of Logan’s claws embedded in her arm. Which is pretty useful as once events settle down a bit and Logan realizes that the team under this kind of direction isn’t his thing anymore, he goes to leave and is promptly killed. It’s kind of quick and out of the blue, but it causes some good shockwaves since Jean was linked to him at the time and her love of him, which is stronger and deeper than her love with Scott ever was, ends up knocking everyone out completely for a time. Which allows the real villain of the day to reveal themselves as Storm seizes on the opportunity when Sabertooth arrives to come kill her since he realized that she was the one that killed Logan.
X-Men Forever throws a lot of things at the reader right from the start and there isn’t a lot of catchup to what happened previously – you know, back in 1991. But with a base familiarity of the characters, it’s easy to drop into this time and start moving forward since it’s easy to shift into a number of things and the realization that it’s not connected to the main timeline anymore helps since it makes everything a lot more final in a ways. Claremont does a lot here, in old school style with lots of thought bubbles, exposition and character establishing mentality moments, and while it’s kludgy in a few ways, it does the job in setting things up right. But it also starts with some off-putting material early on by placing Storm on the bad guy list, introducing some mysterious new group known as the Consortium that has large agenda ahead of it and events that have been manipulated for years. I’m typically not a fan of this being introduced at this stage of a character’s existence as it just doesn’t work with all that came before, but due to it being a separate timeline at this point I’m willing to work with it.
In Summary:
As eager as I’ve been to read X-Men Forever, I’ve also been very hesitant since it takes me back to a turbulent period for characters that I grew up with that weren’t quite who they were anymore. That’s very evident here, and it’s also amusing that the most grounded ones seem to be the ones who were in Excalibur at the time and avoided being mucked with too much. The opening volume, which covers the first five issues, tries its best to hit the ground running and does so, though I wish there was a bit more establishing material for those like myself that are many years out of the loop. There’s a lot of good familiarity here and a real curiosity to see where they can go since there are several dozen issues that it worked through and did some serious changes with the larger world. Though I fell out of X-Men years ago, there is a good sense of nostalgia and newness about X-Men Forever that will definitely keep me reading, though I can’t say it will draw me into the mainline universe again.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: October 21st, 2009
MSRP: $16.99