X-men Utopia Review

An article by Brad    No Comments

I’ll qualify this by saying that I own every X-men comic book from #129, the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga, to the present.  I like to think that i am an expert on the X-men.  I am geek-certified.  That being said, let’s get to it.

I remember the good old days.  The days when there was a single team.  A coherent team.  Though the members changed over the years, the book always focused on a team.  That has changed recently, with the House of M, which reduced the mutant population to 199.  Plus Hope.  And all of this had led to a more community-based approach to the X-men.  I’ll admit it.  I don’t like it very much.  But that is evolution of the core X-men book, and I don’t envision this direction will last forever.  I personally don’t like the San Fran setting.  let’s get that out of the way.  I loved Australia.  I loved the Xavier Institute.  But I don’t care for the current setting of the book.  I understand, logically, why the X-men set up base there from a social standpoint- San Fran tends to be a very liberal, very accepting city, and what better place for mutants.  But taken as a whole, the location, the community vibe, it doesn’t sit all that well with me.  At least the relocation to newly-risen Utopia sets them aside from the main human population.

All of that being said, this arc must be explored within the context its set in.

The previous story arcs by Fraction have left me wanting more, and in this regard, Utopia gave us something more exciting, more relevant.  It is not only a story, it is a pivotal point in the mythology of the X-Universe.  And in most ways, it was successful. We got a well written story, decent art, a lot of action, a lot of intrigue, and, most importantly, a new standard, a new starting point for the X-men.  And there was a lot of dram, and thankfully, none that was cheesy or forced

It was inevitable that Dark Reign would have to touch the X-men, a group of mutants who refused to take part in the Superhero registration act.  To this end, Osborne created his own group of X-men.  It was a motley crue, and I was a little surprised to see the team together for only a handful of books, several of the members defecting to the X-men at the end.  In this regard, the Dark X-men themselves could have been considered a waste, and even somewhat irrelevant.  Superfluous.  The Dark Avengers are the main bad guys in this story, and part of me feels that the story could have been as successful without the presence of the Dark X-men. 

When it comes to the major “surprise” well, anyone who pays any attention knew that Emma was still working for the X-men and not Osborne.  the whole inclusion of the White Queen in Osborne’s little cabal always struck me as a little off, and I always had the  feeling that she was a mole.  It almost seems out of character for Osborne to have trusted her.

The battles were excellent, if a little congested.  We had the Dark X-men.  And the Dark Avengers.  And what appeared to be all 199 mutants on the X-men side.  It was all a little on the busy side.  Fraction got creative creating logical solutions to deal with The Sentry and Ares, and nothing really seem forced.  We see the return of Dani as a Valkyrie to combat the God of War, and we see Emma deal with the Sentry on a psychic level.

The dialogue was excellent, eliciting shudders from the reader during pivotal scenes, like when Cyclops demands that Osborne surrenders, and when Osborne orders his guys to kill all of the mutants.  And at the end of the story, when Osborne and his army of homicidal lunatics face down the combined might of every X-man and X-student in front of the national media, he almost loses it, almost ordering his Avengers to kill everyone.  Osborne’s personality is captured very well in this story, his balanced insanity always teetering but never collapsing.  Osborne is ready to actually attack the X-men, currently standing on Utopia, when Ms Marvel tells him: “If we kill one of them we have to kill all of them.  Nobody comes back from committing genocide live on the nightly news.”  But still, Osborne seems close to cracking .  Of course, in the end, he and his Avengers and those remaining loyal Dark X-men, leave.

Of course, in the end, Osborne spins this to the media as a win, how he forced the evil, hate-mongering X-men to leave the United States.

There are several smaller stories within the greater scheme, most importantly Dark Beast’s attempt to create a machine that shuts down the X-gene, which he experiments with on the real Beast, with horrible results.  But in the end, this story was all about the eventual clash between the two sides, and the battles, while a little crazy, were excellent (though I am tired of Bullseye appearing to be mortally wounded every month yet coming back healthy and hale every month).

So all in all, this was an exciting, well written story setting the stage for the next chapter in the lives of our merry mutants.  I have no idea where they’ll go from here, but at least we finally got to see Fraction’s brilliance after almost a year of frankly mediocre stories.

PS:  does anyone really care about Cloak and Dagger enough for them to possibly become new X-men?

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