Stray X-Books Thoughts
Krakoa has been up and away my favorite X arc in a long time. I loved how Hickman blew everything up and brought all the mutants together, operating on the same page after fighting for decades.
Reign of X though... not really feeling it that much anymore.
- Too many of the books dragged their feet after X of Swords. Marauders and Excalibur barely moved on, and now it’s already time for the Hellfire Gala.
- Excalibur went from my favorite X book to my least favorite. Is this even a team anymore?
- Marauders spend far too little time marauding. The King in Black tie in was fun because they actually got to save some people. Madripoor has been pretty cool too.
- Hellions low key became the best X book, which totally shouldn’t be the case for a niche title catering to the more hardcore fans. Kwannon and Sinister are so fun together.
- X-Corp issue #1 was so blah and unnecessary. Warren is not an interesting characters. He’s just rich. Monet and Jamie deserve so much better.
- Main X title is so hit or miss. That’s kinda the point, but it doesn’t feel necessary anymore besides the Vault stuff.
- Cable is a fun book, but hardly feels super organized or necessary. Doesn’t feel like we’ve learned anything new about Kid Cable as a character.
- X-Force is a narrative mess. Fun stuff with Kid Omega recently. Why haven’t Cable, Kid Omega and the Cuckoos all gone on a group date yet? Domino stuff was cool early on. This team isn’t vital to anything. Love the art though.
- New Mutants isn’t a regular pull for me so I don’t have a ton to say. Dig the art, but never felt super compelled to add it to my list beyond when it’s important for the other books.
- I love the concept of Sword. Great characters. The Gateway centric issue was so fun. Definitely regrettable how consumed the early arc has been with King in Black.
- Children of the Atom isn’t a bad read, but I can see why it was pushed back a year. Not super compelling.
- X-Factor is a fun book full of LGBTQ characters. Hardly delivers on its premise though. It’s not really a murder detective book. Most of the time the characters are just hanging out. I don’t super care since I love Northstar and Rachel, but I can see why sales plummeted. This is not a vital book at all.
- Wolverine is Wolverine. Makes sense that he has his own book considering he’s not in X-Force all that much, but eh.
This time last year I was in awe of how Krakoa felt like the coolest thing X-Men would do in a generation. Now I kind of miss the 90s era, where every book tended to stand on its own merit and the X-Force/Generation X cast tended to have nothing to do with the main X-Men book.
If all these books had finely tuned plots I wouldn’t be complaining. I liked following all of them and didn’t care how big a percentage it made of my pull list. Now I kind of feel like Marvel isn’t delivering fans the kind of material that’s worthy of the investment.
