X-Men # 1- 6
Jubilee is having a lunch with Pixie when suddenly, a dude
explodes and sprays everyone with blood, including Jubilee. Jubilee is rushed back to Utopia and it’s
soon discovered that the guy was a vampire bomb and everyone splattered is
transforming into a vampire. The X-Men
investigate and discover vampire groups throughout the city and eventually
encounter Blade. Blade informs them that
Dracula has been killed and his son, Xarus, has united the various vampire
clans in an effort to take over San Francisco and Mutantkind. Cyclops takes a gamble and has Dracula
reassembled in an effort to usurp Xarus and take the vampires away from the
city. As vampire attacks grow, Jubilee
succumbs to the call of Xarus and now, fully vampire, tricks Wolverine into
going after her. The vampires turn
Wolverine and then use him to help them attack Utopia. Cyclops is then confronted by Wolverine and
he reveals that they used nano-bots to shut down Logan’s healing factor, in
fear that the vampires might be after him.
He reactivates the healing factor and Logan goes back to his old
self. After dealing with the forces
attacking Utopia, the X-Men head over to the vampire’s headquarters, were
Dracula proceeds to kill his son.
Cyclops convinces Dracula that he did something to him while they were
putting him back together. Dracula
agrees to withdraw the vampire forces, much to Blade chagrin. He leaves them with a turned Jubilee, whom
they need to lock up, hoping that part of her is still in there.
I think this one of those rare cases where, to understand
the scope of this, one should include the tie-ins. With only these six issues, it felt like it
was trying to be bigger than it was really was.
Maybe those tie-ins would have added more to that.
Overall, this wasn’t too bad. I liked the use of Blade and Dracula. It was neat.
It was far less gimmicky than I believed it would be. I especially liked the connections between
Storm and Dracula – it was good nod to the history the X-Men have with
Dracula. But I’m not a big vampire
fan. Rather, I’m not a big fan of the
X-Men mingling with supernatural forces.
It’s distracting and weird.
There’s not a lot of characterization going in this title,
which is disappointing. And Cyclops
feels like he’s nearing a tipping point.
Shutting down Wolverine’s healing factor? Why didn’t Logan yell at him about that? That’s a big deal! And taking such a huge risk by resurrecting
Dracula felt like ‘oh crap, Scott’s gone insane.’ Not a big fan of that. I have to wonder if we are supposed to see
Scott here as starting to reach a new level of superiority and confidence. In fact, when he called the X-Men “soldiers,”
I cringed a little.
The art was okay, but every single woman was really
busty. Like, unnecessarily so. I don’t ever remember Jubilee having breasts
that size. Ever.
Side-Note: Honestly, I can’t include every arc of this
title. I can’t afford it and most of
them are not critical to the X-Men’s on-going narrative (well, Volume Two
is). Plus, it looked like this was kind
of an “X-Men Team-Up” book anyways. For
a while, we’ll be sticking exclusively with Uncanny X-Men and some (but not
all) of X-Men Legacy.
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