Skip to main content

House of X/Power of X Hot Take

X-Marks the spot with this series! (Ugh. I know. Sorry about that)
Last week, the last issue of Jonathan Hickman's X-men two mini-series came to an end. His return to Marvel was billed as a big event that would change the landscape of the X-men forever (until the next big thing).

I can say definitively that he has done just that. If you read comics, I get that Hickman is not everyone's cup of tea. He tends to write grand, long spanning, complicated stories. Separately, the pieces do not make sense, but they come together as a whole at the end. There is a brilliance in the way that he writes because he is well aware of what he is doing and you just have to wait till the end.

I say all that to say that each issue of his book went from confusing to masterful. Now that it is all done, I can say it is definitely masterful. He has definitely reshaped the X-Men. Their mission is now different. I truly enjoyed this series and there were genuine, mouth wide open surprise moments from me.

The most amazing thing about this series is that Hickman took characters from deep into the X-Men lore and made them relevant. I think the biggest star of these books is Moira McTaggert. To say anything else would spoil things, so I will leave it there. She has been kind of retconned into being probably the most important mutant ever. I know that sounds like the hottest of hot takes, but once you read this series, you will know what I mean.

Some of the forgotten characters from Brian Michael Bendis's run on the X-Men appear and they are have also been thrust into an area of importance. We get characters such as the Phalanx, Doug Ramsey, Forge, Nimrod and others. He pulled in as many X-characters as he could and breathed life into them.

I'm speaking around all the big things that happened in this series because I really don't want to spoil it for people. Okay. Maybe one thing. The mutants now have a sovereign nation built on island called Krakoa. If you know anything about the X-Men, the name Krakoa should be setting of your nerd sense. There are grand ideas here that are going to play out for a little while and I am over the moon. After the last couple of years of trying to do something interesting with the X-Men, I think we finally got it.

To go along with the writing, we get wonderful art from Pepe Larraz (quickly becoming one of my favorite artists) and R.B. Silva (I had written him off a while ago about not being so good on X-Men: Gold. I was wrong).

These books were pure Hickman. The issues are full of graphic design pages and charts. We jump back and forth between the present and the future.

Nevermind anything that came before this, the X-Men are back and I am genuinely excited about what happens next.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zack Snyder's Justice League

The moment has come that some had clamored for. The moment I never wanted to see happen. Let me start by saying this. I don't like that this exists because it validates all the toxic fan boys, angry over how Justice League turned out, who cried out for the Snyder's original vision of his movie. I hate that public pressure made this happen. If only people like this would use their power for good. How about more representation? How about better story telling? No, give me that thing that I don't have because I'm going to bully you for it. I love comics, but the community surrounding them can be very toxic and I hate that. I feel like this movie is the manifestation of that. Clearly I have a lot of feelings before even coming into this movie. I will try to be as objective as possible, but remember, these are my opinions and I will feel what I feel. To prep me, I took the crazy step of re-watching the theatrical release of this movie first, so I can have something to compare...
7 comments
Read more

The Inevitable Best and Worst List of 2024 - Part I

  Life got crazy this year, so I was consistently behind on my comic book reading. That's why this list is so late. I needed my recency bias to help me with some of these picks. There were a lot of good surprises this year though, which I will talk about in more detail. One thing I'll start adding to these reviews is how many 2024 books I bought and read this year. This total is not how many comics I read in total, because I have a backlog of older stuff I cycle through as well when I get caught up on the recent stuff.  That official count is: 469 . Let's break that down. How do my numbers fall out in regard to publishers? It's no surprise that I'm team Marvel, but I try to balance that with other publishers. DC is always my number two and then a toss up amongst the other indie publishers. What is surprising to me is that IDW has outpaced Image comics. But really, in looking at my numbers, that IDW number is inflated because those are 95% Ninja Turtle comics. My pur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Batman Returns - Retro Review

*Editors note: I wrote this over a year ago and didn't get around to posting it. I'm not editing any of my past tense because what fun would that be. Imagine I posted this in 2024. ** A year or two ago, I tried to convince my wife (and myself), that Batman Returns was a Christmas movie. I insisted we watch it, holding this movie in high regard from my childhood. We never finished it then, but a few weeks ago, we did. Let me tell you, your childhood can lie to you. Nostalgia is a potent drug. It makes you forget things. Halfway through the movie, all I could think is, "This movie is so damn stupid." Or "I think I hate this movie." I forgot that maybe a decade ago, I did this same exercise, fooling myself into thinking this was a worthy successor to Batman. It isn't. It's not close. I'm going to get into my reasoning for this. If I were to describe this movie with one word, it'd be bizzare. After the success of the first movie, it's like Wa...
Post a Comment
Read more