1081 ( )

Fraction really does do a good job at smart X-Men serial drama--Whedon made it Buffy, but it should, of course, be about real people, not larger-than-life cinematic characters. Just real people doing cinematic things and then going "whoa" and picking up the pieces of themselves--and the pile of "decompression stories" at the end, each focusing on a character and how they feel fucked up inside and eventually get better, feel surprisingly relevant here. For anyone who has spent any time with these characters, the events of Manifest Destiny--generic thugs, "Hellfire Cult", old villain, new X-Man triumphs over fear, etc.--are pointless except as a pretext to send you spinning off into the past, thinking about how this character is going to react to that character in a context because of the history and what's going on and so on. It's almost overwhelming when the characters have this much attached to them, and it makes the most productive reading seemingly one that focuses on how overwhelming it must be for them and how they deal. The reigning formula for superhero comics has been "soap opera + fistfights" for a while now, but this is a compelling argument that for the X-Men, at least--a people rather than a team, whose costumed mutant criminal adversaries never made sense really--a better formula is "sci-fi thriller + trauma narrative". ( )

This was a great kick off to a new chapter in the X-Men story. After basing their operations out of NYC almost exclusively for decades, the X-Men are moving to the west coast after the destruction of the mansion, and are setting up shop in San Francisco. They build themselves a new home there in abandoned military outposts around the city, and open their doors to all mutants, both active and former, who seek refuge there. Magneto shows up, mysteriously re-powered, and helps the High Evolutionary collect technology from the Dreaming Celestial, to a purpose that as yet seems to be a mystery.

Greg Land and Terry Dodson's art is amazing; both artists have such a dynamic style each to their own, and their storytelling is really good. Sometimes it's hard to follow what an artist is trying to illustrate, but not with these two. They are two of the best artists working on the X-Men in a while. I'm anxious to see where Matt Fraction is going to take these characters in the future. ( )