Review: Age of X-Man: X-Tremists #1

Gwen Dylan Stacy

6 years ago

I won’t lie to your faces. IÂ absolutely fell off of all X-Man titles post Civil War II. I felt like there was just so much to take in and be read that I was really lost in the thick of things with no bearings. The constant team line up changes as well as Marvel’s ability to somehow spin-off from the main content into various other titles really made my head spin. In truth, even heading into this entire issue, I was sort of in the dark about things. So, hopefully, if you’re current enough that you understand everything leading up to titles like X-Tremists, you can forgive my ignorance.

The title itself opens onto a bit of lightheartedness that I’m grateful to Leah Williams for. We so often forget that, outside of conflict, these people on the pages are…indeed..people. The art by George Jeanty with inks by Roberto PoggiÂ and colors by Jim Charalampidis is different from what I typically think of as far as X-Men stuff I’d come to really be a fan of, but they’re beautiful nonetheless. There’s a bit of nostalgic wistfulness that I get when I see the team themselves come together wearing the signature gold and the feeling is echoed in the lettering that seems short and sweet with reason by VC’s Clayton Cowles (a favorite of mine.)

We quickly move from the lighthearted nature of the relationship between Bobby Drake and Jubilee Nation to the team’s mission, which apparently is collecting up rogue members of the Utopian mutant society that have committed crimes that violate law and threaten the peace that they’ve found. This crime being love. It’s a strange notion to think about, but understandable considering that, if what I’m gathering is correct, society is trying to ensure that no new mutant births occur outside of those already pre-existing.

Those who threaten this balance, as we’ve seen in the Age of X-Man: Alpha comic, are quickly dealt with by excommunication from society. Their counterparts are then taken to cerebro to have their memories readjusted so that little to no remanent of what might have actually transpired remain. It’s during a routine crackdown on a pair of these “criminals” that we learn something that shakes the team to their core and leaves them unsure of how to approach the future.

While I’m not quite sure how this will continue and what links it might have to Luna (possibly a young version of Opal Luna Saturnyne?) and the retrograde Earth – 238 (which in my mind has some connection given how the word is mentioned and considered a slur) but I’m interested to see where this situation leads. The title itself earns a 3.5 out of 5 for this long estranged from the X-Men world reader. What did you think?

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(W) Leah Williams (A) Georges Jeanty (CA) Rahzzah