Last Week’s Comics 9/28/2011
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Ultimate Comics X-Men #1
(Marvel – writer: Nick Spencer; art: Paco Medina)
I know Nick Spencer’s work best from his fantastic series, Morning Glories. When I read that he would be writing the Ultimate version of the X-Men, I knew I wanted to read it.
I was not disappointed.
Ultimate Comics X-Men has the perfect balance of backstory and story. The issue opens with Jean Grey visiting a family whose daughter has started manifesting her mutant powers. The end result of this visit is both horrific and tragic, and it sets a tone of uneasiness for the rest of the issue and the series.
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Much of the issue is concerned with catching readers up to the present. In the wake of such series as Ultimatum and Ultimate X (both written by Jeph Loeb), mutants were discovered to have been created in a lab. Scientists were trying to reproduce the Super-Soldier Serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America. Instead, they accidentally created the X-Gene and starting with Nick Fury and Wolverine, a new generation of humans was born.
This fact plays heavily into this first issue as the characters are grappling with the idea that everything they’ve come to find unique about themselves is actually the result of an experiment gone wrong. And while the United States government tries very hard to convince the American public that mutants are being kept in “mutant friendly compounds,” Spencer and Medina show us the truth. Mutants are being hunted and enslaved. And any free mutant is considered an enemy of the state.
Spencer works with this idea the most. Readers sympathize with the mutants. We’ve come to see them as heroes and victims of circumstance. Much like the naturalistic writers of the 1890s, Spencer seems determined to show his characters as casualties of heredity and environment.
There’s the making of a split – a government-sponsored team and a rogue group that is determined to free its mutant kind – but with the violence displayed in the beginning of the issue, it seems like people will go to very disturbing lengths to keep their family from being tangled up in the government’s issue with mutants.
As an introductory issue, X-Men #1 is phenomenal. Its pacing is well structured, and it moves seamlessly from scene to scene. Even if readers haven’t been following the Ultimate X-Universe, Spencer does a fantastic job of bringing them up to speed. And I can’t gush about Paco Medina enough. His character drawings are sharp and clean, and Juan Vlasco’s inks make the comic fun to look at. Colors are rendered beautifully, and light and shadow only aid the visual magnificence of the panels.
In a week full of such strong issues, it’s hard to tell people which ones they should buy. But this time it’s easy: Ultimate Comics X-Men is a book comic fans should own. It’s the start of something big, and I think people should be on board from the beginning.
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