Finally, the mutants' Krakoan era has birthed an X-Men team. Jonathan Hickman's X-Men run which preceded this one was expansive and cerebral and set up a hell of a lot intrigue, but it was a little scattered in terms of character and subject matter. For the most part no two issues were about the same thing. Now though, Krakoa has voted, and a dedicated team of public-facing mutants have set up shop in New York City, here to fight the good fight.
I really enjoyed this volume. Being grounded in the same team of mutants issue after issue added a lot of cohesion to the story, even if Scott and Jean pretty much took centre stage for most of it. What really kept me turning the page, though, were the three antagonistic narrative threads running through these fist six issues. Attacks against humanity from 'Gameworld', Feilong's conquest of Arrako's moon, and Ben Urich's investigative journalism all really keep the X-Men on their toes with a good mix of action and politics.
Something to note: if you found yourself reading those last couple of paragraphs wondering what on earth a 'Krakoa' is, then this isn't the X-Men volume for you. Yes, generally 'Volume 1s' are good jumping-on points for comic-book titles, but the X-Men are a special case (aren't they always?). X-Men By Gerry Duggan is very much rooted in the current large-scale status-quo shift for mutants that basically has them all living on a sentient mutant island called Krakoa. This is the most interesting thing to happen to the X-books in a while, but this volume works best if you've already read the following titles (this is the reading order, too, if you're wondering):
I mention this only because I imagine new readers who pick up this books might find themselves at a bit of a loss otherwise.
Overall, I found Gerry Duggan's episodic style of storytelling linked by threads of burgeoning antagonists to be quite effective. I can sometimes find myself losing steam while reading comics where each issue is it's own standalone action story with little connective tissue to the events that happened before or after them, especially when the appeal of the story is bombastic action over interesting character dynamics (it's why I generally struggle with some of the older comic books from the 60's and 70's).
Duggan does maybe lean a bit towards crazy action over character conflict, but the action is done so well, and the antagonists are so unique and interesting that I have to say that this book worked for me and I'm looking forward to reading the second volume.
***
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