“X-Men”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jed MacKay
Art: Netho Diaz
Colors: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
MEET THE ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT X-MEN? There are mutants who call themselves X-Men in Alaska and Louisiana and Chicago. But as Cyclops’ team find themselves in more than one set of crosshairs dealing with a mutant crisis in Alaska, a new group of enemies make themselves known: They are the X-Men, who are sponsored by 3K in their bid for possession of the future of mutantkind!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The X-Men main series relaunched last year in a post-Krakoa world and saw a legacy number of 301. Which I do find amusing because I remember back when the first series launched in the 90s and my frustration and anger over it with all the chaos and changes at the time mixed in with the huge speculation market, gatefold covers, and so much more. The book is underway well with Jed MacKay handling the script and doing a decent job of working through this new reality for the characters. This issue brings in Netho Diaz for the pencils and a trio of inkers to handle the artwork that gives us a good look with creative designs and a solid flow for the storytelling, and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo’s color artwork does a great job of elevating it in how it brings it to life. It’s the kind of book that comes together well with a talented group all working in unison.
The storyline, as we got in the last issu,e has been interesting with the subsumed twin that has now exploded out, which we see Cassandra Nova trying to manipulate into being on her “team” going forward. That’s operating in the background and is about to go bigger since we get Magneto getting the medication he needs to power him up so he can take on the Sentinel and use it not just to move but to fight. It’s like a bookend-ish piece to the installment because most everything else is just action. The 3K group that was introduced some time ago has not clicked for me since we first saw them because they’re presented as just punk upstarts trying to earn the X-Men name by taking down the real thing and it just feels misguided in the state of the world. But if you just treat them as a bunch of know-nothings, it makes enough sense to work. And Nova is surely manipulating them as well to do some of this – in addition to them being pretty predisposed to acting like this anyway.
The fight dominates the issue beyond that and it’s certainly fun but also frustrating at the same time. The artwork is great, there are some creative sequences that come up in how the two sides go at it, and it’s easy to invest in a classic kind of sequence like this. The problem is that we get the upstarts not being particularly interesting in either personality or powers while the X-Men proper basically just operate as solo agents for a lot of it. Ilyanna is amusing in wanting to get a matching arm that she took the first time around, and Juggernaut has some pretty fun stuff in how he copes with attempts to take him down, but there’s not much beyond that. It’s just kind of there as like a random street throwdown challenge by the new kids against the established kids. Except the established kids are so well-oiled and have seen so much that they should be able to just take them down in a minute or two at most.
In Summary:
I’m admittedly curious to see what’s next when it comes to Magneto and his fight, and I really enjoyed the minor banter between Glob and Hank, but the majority of the issue is simply straightforward action. The artwork is great and the dialogue is solid, but I’m just hard-pressed to have an interest in any of these new characters from what we see of them. The interesting storyline we have of the twins is just in the background here so the main thing that’s been unique for the most part is kept at arm’s length. Looking forward to more, and I do enjoy the action, but I wish there was a bit more strength to these “new’ X-Men so that it had impact.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: May 7th, 2025
MSRP: $4.99
