X-Men (2021) #1: "Fearless. Chapter One: In Threes"

[alliterator]

Cyclops is the coolest. We love him. We always loved him. Has anybody paid a higher price and worked harder to see this day dawn for mutants? And yet, he remembers where he comes from. Not an island, but a team. He’s been a part of the X-Men since the beginning, and they’ve saved the world more times than he can count, and I think the team has saved him, too.
-- Gerry Duggan

Comments

[numeronone]

"Cyclops is the coolest! You can tell from the way he jokes about murdering a woman who's struggled with immense pressure and mental health issues out of spite"

[tinygaylaura]

?????

I didn't see him do that in this issue

[mastermahan]

"Cyclops, you're joking about the recent murder of the woman I once thought was my sister. Say anything like that again, and I'll use your visor to crush your skull like a grape and we can continue this tour after you shower off the resurrection goo."

[nyadnar17]

She literally caused the single worst event in his entire fucking life and over a decade of stress and trauma to him personally.

I think he's entitled to not give a fuck about her.

[tinygaylaura]

I really enjoyed this first issue

It's mainly set up but it was fun set up and I'm excited to see both some new villains added and also to see the return of the High Evolutionary and his weird science

[leahandillyana]

Cyclops sucks, he was only ever cool when Claremont wrote him. Everything afterwards was pretending to ride a dead horse while claiming it to be the best racehorse ever.

[tinygaylaura]

I loved Cyclops when Bendis was writing him.

[arilou_skiff]

TBH, Claremont also wrote some pretty bad Cyclops stuff. He is the one who made him just leave his pregnant wife after all.

[mastermahan]

"We'd like to honor John's sacrifice. He was killed by an exploding plane, so I'm sure he'll be thrilled that we've named a plane after him. We're honoring him AND reminding him of his horrific death at the same time!"

[scorntx]

"We could honour him by resurrecting him."
"Let's not go nuts."

[panthyr]

Oh look, mutant Christianity.

[deh_tommy]

Hurray, an X-book that doesn’t fill me with dread and disgust!

[tinygaylaura]

I'm glad you enjoyed this one :)

[donnblake]

Having a monument to fallen mutants when you're also in the process of bringing back all the fallen mutants (except the clones you don't like) is interesting. I guess visiting your own grave isn't *that* novel in the Marvel Universe.

I sure hope Cyclops plans on bringing on some staff if he's going to publish the Treehouse's phone number.

" And yet, he remembers where he comes from."

An evil orphanage run by Mr. Sinister? Oh, right, after that.

[iamrman]

This was certainly better than the pretentious nonsense of Hickman's X-Men.

[tinygaylaura]

I liked Hickman's run on the book myself

But I like this too so far :)

[nyadnar17]

Yes, because Conservatives are the only one who have a problem with mutants or would be screaming about foreign nations having an undue influence over the government.

Still this looks awesome as hell. Can't wait to pick it up.

[blueprintstyles]

I'm glad Cyclops is in a good groove now.

[silverhammerman]

I wouldn't say Cyclops is the coolest, but I do really like him. It's been ages since I listened to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, but I've always really appreciated Jay's read on Cyclops as a guy who just fucks up everything in his life but remains dedicated to the thing he was raised to believe in. He's not a good person, but he is a good character.

Loved to see Ben Urich here, I've been desperate to see more of the major mutant characters interacting with the little people (human and otherwise) and Urich is one of the Marvel U's perennial Normal Dudes. Plus he gets to express reasonable reservations about the whole Arrako/Mars thing while still clearly not being a bigot and remaining supportive of mutants and Krakoa in general? And he's maybe gonna be the one to blow the lid off of the whole secret of resurrection, or at least drive that plot thread to the forefront? Good shit. The final sentiment of "If the mutants have some grand design to take over the planet, they're doing it with kindness, and we can always use more of that" sort of gets right to the heart of some of my own issues (I'm deeply skeptical of the sentiment), so I'm really hoping that Urich sticks around and now that we're well into the Krakoan era writers can start addressing this stuff.

I am squinting just a touch at the choice to have the X-Men based in Seneca Park as a tribute to both fallen mutants and a displaced black population. It's a kind of messy move to align mutants with real world marginalization (which never works out well because the Mutant Metaphor doesn't hold up very well under any level of scrutiny) which feels vaguely appropriative. That said, it aligns perfectly with my own, shall we say, jokingly adversarial reading that Krakoa is a bunch of nominally progressive Lib Shit.

[scorntx]

Maybe holding off building a full opinion on the basis of a small section of the first issue of a series, but as first impressions go?
I still think the team is a 'safe' choice, though honestly I don't know if that's either positive or negative at the moment. And this is presuming the team doesn't change at any point.
(though frankly it's amazing Shiro lasted the entire issue and is still there.)

I do definitely like how the characters are not breaking out into pseudo-philosophical purple prose every other sentence, but are talking like actual human beings (and mutants).
And Cyclops being cool is always good.

Buuuuuut...
Duggan's one of those hit-and-miss writers, personally. Not one of Marvel's worst, not by a long shot, however I'm just leery of him after his Guardians of the Galaxy / Infinity Nonsense run. 's a bit of a black eye for him.
(even with the caveat that yes, X-Men and Guardians are very different creatures.)

[mindsweeper]

The whole book felt like a safe choice to me, from the cast to the NY home base to the action.

It feels comfortable but not very exciting or interesting after the last two years. Other than the amazing art, it feels expected, like an X-Men: Gold relaunch.

[alliterator]

If it helps, the X-writers have stated that the Hellfire Gala/X-Men election will be an annual thing, so every year or so, there will be new members of the team.

[blue_bolt]

I both adore and dislike the treehouse at the same time. It's beautiful art, but it doesn't seem that the efficacy of space usage is that good. There floors are far enough apart with high enough ceiling that unless they were running into weight restraints (which hasn't seem to be a problem that particularly hampers mutant engineering in other titles) then they just designed to make a building with excessively high ceilings and pointless air gaps. I would have liked to see another two to four floors in the same height of tree.

[zachbeacon]

I feel like the real advantage is they can just grow another when this one inevitability gets blown up.

[tinygaylaura]

I just realised the title of this story refers to the number of threats introduced in this issue and I now feel like an idiot for not getting that sooner