New X-Men Title, A New (Old) Enemy
It's been a while since we've had an official "new" X-Men #1. Is the battle against Vampires enough to warrant a new title?
The Good
If you were afraid that after Second Coming (which hasn't officially ended yet) the X-Men would just sit around and do nothing, you don't have to worry. Things start out with a bang as a suicide vampire bomber explodes. If you've seen the preview, you know Jubilee was nearby and could possibly become infected. The question is, was she just an innocent bystander or was she actually a target?When we see Cyclops and Wolverine actually sitting around (watching TV), it's nice that he lets Wolverine assemble his own team. With so many mutants/X-Men on Utopia, it makes more sense to assemble a team depending on the situation.
Vampires may be the flavor of the month and people may be getting tired of seeing them everywhere but the nice thing about them is you can have battles where Wolverine can simply cut loose on them. For some reason it's okay for him to slice apart a vampire while I don't think it'd be quite okay if it was another mutant or human.
The Bad
Vampires. But it wasn't as horrible as I feared. Some of the vampires look bad. There was a couple moments the dialogue felt too forced. When the suicide bomber vampire bumps into a "civilian" and he gets ready to say something, his buddy says to him, "Dude, don't. Better let that one go." Sure people talk like that but it didn't seem to flow right. Another moment was when a police officer encounters a big ugly vampire carrying a huge sword, he's completely calm about it. You can guess how that goes.I did enjoy Paco Medina's art for the most part. When it comes to the X-titles, there's some variations on the art. My one complaint and I hate to bring it up, but the way Pixie was drawn didn't look right. Maybe she's been taking her vitamins or something.
The Verdict
The X-Men have a big battle coming their way. I'm not crazy about vampires but I do think this could be a welcome change from fighting mutants or other mutant hating humans. There is an acknowledgment to Storm's past encounter with Dracula that was nice. Since this is the first issue, the battle hasn't fully started yet. The pieces are being put in place. There is action. There are some potential implications occurring already (like the fate of Jubilee). It just didn't blow me completely away. I'm curious to see how the events in this title will correspond to the other X-books like Uncanny X-Men. If we're going to see a huge battle between the X-Men and vampires, you would expect to see mention in the other books as well. Hopefully we'll have a good amount of continuity between the titles to avoid any future nitpickings from people like me.It's a good start. I feel I should be more excited about the X-Men fighting the "Lord of Vampires" but I'm not...yet.
