The post-Secret Wars X-Men titles bizarrely began eight months after the Marvel Universe was put back together again. We found out Cyclops had died in those eight months and the Terrigen Mist spelled the extinction of homo superior! That was bonkers enough but why did Marvel structure it this way with the time jump? Dunno. So we could get Death of X, I guess, which takes us back eight months to show us how Cyclops died? And boy is it unnecessary and boring!
Even at a mere four issues this book feels overlong. Jeff Lemire’s terrible X-Men series crosses over with Charles Soule’s dismal Inhumans title (arguably two of the worst current Marvel ongoings) and the Terrigen Mist is still floating around. At this point this bloody mist has been on a FOUR YEAR jolly – calling it “mist” is a misnomer isn’t it? It should’ve dissipated a LONG time ago if it was!
And even though it’s never harmed mutants before, it’s suddenly poisonous to them now – how utterly contrived and nonsensical! Cyclops finds out and broadcasts to everyone on Earth telepathically via Emma Frost that the Terrigen Mist is lethal to mutants AND humans, based on NOTHING! And, for no reason, humans everywhere believe him and start rioting?! It’s such unconvincing, trite storytelling.
Even though obviously the Inhumans didn’t engineer the Terrigen Mist to be harmful to mutants, Cyclops et al. decide to believe that they did because the conflict between the two sides is what this book is predicated on. And if that premise wasn’t flimsy enough, the actual fighting between X-Men and Inhumans is even more pathetic and forced. This is the actual story of the book, by the way! And, even though the X-Men these days really suck, they still look a helluva lot better than Soule’s bland, uninteresting Inhumans – no wonder that title never took off! I can’t wait for Marvel to give up trying to make the Inhumans a thing. NOBODY. CARES.
And to close out this forgettable trash, Cyclops dies in the most underwhelming, unimaginative and utterly pointless death ever! What a worthless, stupid, horribly dull book. Who knew that the truncated version of Cyclops’ demise in other X-books was more than sufficient than the story itself? Nobody needs to read this crap.
It’s ironic that the title works on a meta level too. I get that Death of X is about the supposed death of mutantkind (again) and the death of one of the original X-Men but it could also be applied to the dying sales and interest in Marvel’s current X-titles (the Inhumans were never bestsellers or nearly as compelling). But when they’re this bad, who can blame the readers for not spending money on them? I still want to read good X-Men comics though so here’s hoping the X-Men rise like the Phoenix above this useless rubbish and somehow get good soon!
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