Wolverine and the X-Men #1

[informationgeek]

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Chris Bachalo

Eh, heck with it. Let's look at more Marvel properties! Here's one everyone should know about it, Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron.





...welcome to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Welcome to the future.

Comments

[freezer]

I don't know if bookending this book with obnoxious snob parents and My Little War Profiteer was the way to hook the audience...

[thanekos]

There's the parallelism, at least- he's not the first Black King of the Hellfire Club with a profitable trade in Sentinels.

[freezer]

That just adds another layer of NOPE: Another world conqueror-wannabe following in someone else's exact footsteps, convinced that HE can do it right!

[majingojira]

The Hellfire Brats were in that special level of villainy where they didn't provide an engaging threat, nor had the charisma to be even remotely entertaining.

[captainbellman]

I still wish Toad/Husk had worked out.

[redmagpie]

I was always confused by how much older he was supposed to be?

[captainbellman]

I didn't really think about that. Apart from "kinda slimy, long tongue, toad-like", there's barely any consistency over his appearance.

For the sake of argument, let's say he's early 30s, she's late 20s?

[angelophile]

I always pegged Toad as at least in his forties and last her age was outright stated, Paige was 19, so.... yeahbutno is my reaction to it.

[captainbellman]

Ironic, given that she's regularly dallied with a character who shares part of your username and is at least twice her age...

[angelophile]

Ten years older, maybe? She was 19 and I believe it was mentioned he was in his twenties, presumably late twenties/early 30s like most of the original X-men.

[majingojira]

Honestly? If the ironically titled All New X-Men didn't exist, this would be the worst Xavier school title I've ever read.

[long_silence]

It's not like the O5 spent that much time in class at either JGS or NXS, or interacting with classmates, or even learning how to use their powers (Jean got a few tutorials with Kitty and Emma and that's it) I hardly consider it a school title.

So this mess gets to keep the "Worst X-school book" award

[zylly]

Wow. Could not disagree more. I thought this book was pretty consistently excellent.

[majingojira]

To each their own, but please, answer a few questions for me?

Quinten Quire -- What do you feel was the point where he shifted from out and out terrorist to being somewhat heroic? And where did he show regret for his past actions?

Of the new crop of students, did anything about their characters really stand out to you? I don't mean powers and how those powers affected their personalities, but things about who they are that you found interesting? As an aside, there are several new students I do enjoy, but I find them somewhat lacking in depth.

Idie Okonkwo at the Hellfire Club. Do you feel the writer was aware of her age when they decided to put her in Selene's old outfit?

Those are 3 of my big problems with the book in truth, but I'd love to hear alternate perspectives.

The other problem I had that it is in truth a Wolverine book rather than a school/teen book as was the case in the past and those characters suffered for it.

And I honestly don't care much for Wolverine.

[zylly]

Certainly!

Taking the one by one...


Quinten Quite: I actually had stopped reading the X-Books before he was introduced, so this series was actually my first introduction to him. He worked well as a jerkass who secretly cared about people, so I never bothered tracking down previous experiences. So it may have been a biased view, but it made him work. And while he may not exactly have shown remorse, it was clear he had a better developed sense of right and wrong than he once did.

The new students: Broo and Kid Gladiator were a treat, if nothing else. Broo was adorkable and Kid Gladiator, well, the arrogant jackass who gets his head handed to him is always good for a laugh. Later additions like Shark Girl and Eye Boy were interesting, if not for the fact that the redirection of the X-line kind of precluded their development.
Additionally, the early part of this book focused heavily on Idie, who is so delightfully messed up that she's always worth tuning in for.

Idie: Considering comics as a whole have always had a problem remembers when characters are supposed to be really young (13-14 year old Kitty Pryde was frequently drawn closer to 18-ish), she wasn't any more uncomfortable-making than Deadly Nightshade from Bronze Age Captain America.

This was actually the book that got me back to liking Wolverine. He's always at his best for me in the mentor role, where he has to stop being ragey and take responsibility for someone else. This was just his Kitty/Rogue/Jubiliee/Hisako role writ large to the whole school.

[majingojira]

I wouldn't call your view of Quire biased, just lacking in history. Which, I feel, is something only truly bad comics can thrive on. If the more you know, the worse it becomes, then I can not really hold it as good.

But that's me. I've grown bitter and cynical about comics after about a decade of reading them.

And even then, I have to agree, viewed in isolation, he can be seen that way. But I know about his vicarious body count. I know that his motivations for anarchy are extremely shallow and lead to the death of a girl he liked a lot. Though I don't really see where he made a turning point in the series personally, with less baggage, one could be more easily found.

Humorously, Broo and Shark Girl were two who stood out for somewhat similar reasons. Broo is indeed a big ball of adorkableness. While some of the plots he had weren't the best (the whole "Shot in the head and become feral" thing), he was at least amusing. Shark Girl had visual dynamism and a sympathetic origin (struggling with urges she could only half control). But I feel she didn't come into her own until Spider-Man and the X-Men.

That was fun for what little it was.

Kid Gladiator . . . I never got over how much of an arrogant ass he was and found few empathetic points on his character. The closest I could see is a constant need for validation which was just rather sad.

Eye Boy I have a soft spot for just because I can't help but think of his entire existence as being constant suffering to the point where it swings around from sad to comedic.

Idie . . . I've honestly always had a problem with her from her creation. She's a character that screams "I read this article about some stuff and want to make a character about it!" Which is fine and dandy but it just came off as generally lacking in the full complexities of the situation. And from an interesting seed, though fumbled at the start, she just rather floundered. It's like, she had this really odd opinion about her mutant abilities that truly made her unique -- but she never did anything truly different from the other characters. She never let that unique opinion truly inform her decisions or actions from what I remember.

But my memory has always been crappy, so I could be wrong.

More to the point, I find what was done to Kitty uncomfortable then, and now's not much better.

Thank you for replying! I'm very glad that even though we have different opinions about the series, there are things about it we do agree on -- which was my ultimate goal in asking those questions.

[zylly]

I've been reading comics a good long while now. And I've gone through my own cycles of cynicism. These days, I kind of default to an "everything passes and maybe the next guy will do better" sort of approach.

I agree that Kid Gladiator was mostly a one-note character, but he was an entertaining one note character. The issue where he returns to the Empire is actually quite good.

Idie definitely faltered somewhere between her introduction and further appearances, though I'm not sure entirely where.

Thank you for the questions! Thoughtful questions like that are all too rare an occurrence in most comic discussions these days.

[philippos42]

This is really cute!

I'm scared to learn that Gladiator has a kid, though.

[starwolf_oakley]

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it doesn't make sense. As a pocast said "I get Wolverine not liking how Cyclops is running the X-Men and leaving. I don't get half the team going with him."

[yvonmukluk]

Because they don't like how Cyclops is running things, either?

He did do some...questionable stuff before schism. Might be Logan was the first to speak up and present an alternative.

[zylly]

The split makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the handful of kids who sided with Scott suddenly being made to go to the school after the Scott and Logan conflict boiled over after AvsX.

[majingojira]

That's because, as far as Marvel was concerned, they were nothing more than interchangeable wallpaper to plaster behind the Big Name X-Men (tm).

Which is hillarious because this was the same time period that Wolverine's solo titles were failing IIRC.

[zylly]

Relevant link!

http://waitingforthet.tumblr.com/post/53412675271/so-surge-is-back-at-the-school-for-some