The Dawn of X series collects all of the issues from the six X-Men titles spinning out of Jonathan Hickman’s House of X/Powers of X primer as they were published. Volume 1 collects all six first issues, Volume 2 collects all six second issues, and so on. It’s an interesting idea and might be appealing if you’re a big X-Men fan who was going to read all six titles regardless of quality and want to read them in publication order, but, for the more discerning reader, this first volume serves as a good taster selection to see which titles you might want to read and which ones you don’t - all titles are collected separately as normal as well (ie. if you want to just read the main X-Men series, those issues are collected in its own book).
Like HoX/PoX, I wasn’t that impressed with what’s on offer in Dawn of X. Of the six titles, only two mildly appealed to me, so I might read those books at some point, but the others I doubt I’ll ever pick up.
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu’s X-Men #1 is maybe the worst issue here. X-Men attack a lab, free some young mutants and take them back to Krakoa, before having dinner at Cyclop’s new house on the moon. Like too much of Hickman’s stuff, and surprisingly given how feted the guy is, it’s really boring. I liked Yu’s art and this issue does contain the line from Cyclops, who says after seeing some gorillas attacking: “Be careful, they’re sure to be savvy - all these apes have PhDs!” which made me laugh. How would he know that? And I love the mental visual of seeing each of these apes presenting their theses (what would their subjects be?!) before a board.
Gerry Duggan and Matteo Lolli’s Marauders #1 is one of the two titles I kinda liked. Kitty Pryde can’t use Krakoa’s portals to jump around the place for no reason explained yet so she’s gotta boat it to the island. And, as soon as she arrives, Emma Frost offers her the position of head of the black market shipping arm of the new mutant order - it’s a pirate’s life for Kitty and her crew: Iceman, Pyro and Storm. It’s not a bad issue. Duggan writes Kitty well and I’m a little curious to see how things go for the group, as well as the reason why Kitty’s the only mutant whom Krakoa doesn’t seem to like.
Tini Howard and Marcus To’s Excalibur #1 is another candidate for worst of the bunch. Betsy Braddock, Apocalypse, Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee are doing stuff with orange portals that’s pissing off Morgan le Fay and there’s a new Captain Britain. I hated everything about this one. Incomprehensible dreary trash from yawning start to snoozing finish.
Jonathan Hickman co-writes Ed Brisson and Rod Reis’ New Mutants #1 which sees Magik head up a team of D-listers as they putz about in space with Cyclops’ space pirate dad. The art was blotchy, the story was dull - everything Hickman seems to touch has the life sucked out of it. I couldn’t have cared less about this one.
Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara’s X-Force #1 is the other kinda decent issue. We see the inevitable fight back from the outside world to Xavier’s proclamations in HoX/PoX and, as befitting X-Force, it’s dark and violent. I like the cast of characters - Beast, Domino, Wolverine, Black Tom and Jean Grey - and I laughed when I saw the character who dies all the time (I think, to date, it’s six times now) DIES AGAIN at the end of the issue. Seriously?! For that alone, I might have to keep reading to see what Marvel were thinking with this title. This has to be a running joke at this point, right?
Bryan Hill and Szymon Kudranski’s Fallen Angels #1 is joint last with X-Men #1 and Excalibur #1 as the shittiest of the bunch. Some evil mutant kid is doing evil mutant kid stuff in Japan - oh, what-fucking-ever. I didn’t realise Psylocke and Betsy Braddock were separate people (look, there’s a zillion X-Men characters, I’m not gonna know about all of them!) and Cable looks shockingly different to how he normally looks in the comics (though he looks more like Josh Brolin in Deadpool 2 so maybe that’s why). I want to like this title because of the cool line-up - Psylocke, Mister Sinister, X-23 - but the writing and story did absolutely nothing for me and Kudranski’s art is far too dark.
All in all, Dawn of X, Volume 1 is a weak collection of unimpressive debuts that don’t really play into or affect one another so I’m not really sure why a series like this exists besides double-dipping into fans’ wallets who will want to have these in addition to the single title volumes. Despite all the fanfare, I still don’t see anything special about the X-Men relaunch.
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