ATG Comics Review: Dawn of X First Thoughts

Welcome to 2020. Sorry, this has taken so long to come out but we have been swamped with broken computers and household items, internet lines being cut and all sorts of health issues popping up for just about the whole family. Anyway, we are back and here’s our first blog for 2020 hope you enjoy!

What I wanted to address in this blog are my first thoughts for the new Dawn of X series of titles, which include all the new X-Men books including X-Force, Excalibur, Marauders, and Fallen Angels just to name a few. Since all of the first issues are out now I will be talking about them. Anyway, I would like to thank Vibranium Comics for staying on the ball with my pull list and not letting me down like other shops that will remain nameless here. I would think needless to say but if you haven’t read the first issues for this series then Spoilers Ahead.

So, the first issue I want to talk about is the first one that came out which was X-Men. Honestly, for being the first issue of the new ongoing x-series, I thought this one was kinda lacking. Except for one really good scene of Magneto and some others moving to destroy an anti-mutant base, it really didn’t show too very much. It was, however, setting up different things about the state of Krakoa and how the government was set up and such which is good to know going into this series but it lacked the punch needed for me to really start this new series out with. I found it a bit disturbing that Magneto is basically revered like a hero and almost has a reverence you usually see for Gods by the children of Krakoa.

I did, however, like that he is dissuading them from fighting in the future like him by telling them that he fights now so that they do not have to when they grow up. One very interesting take away from the first issue is that at the end you find out that the Summers family now has a house on the Blue Area of the moon and that Jean Grey lives up there with Scott and family. In some ways, this seems a bit callous to me to have her live in the same area as where the Dark Phoenix died. Another interesting take away from this revelation is that Wolverine lives on the moon with them and indeed they give a layout of the rooms in the house and Jean has a bedroom right between Scott and Logan’s rooms! Does this mean that in this new mutant utopia that Scott and Logan are sharing Jean? It just seems odd to me that Scott would have his biggest rival for Jean’s affections living with them and with a room right next to hers.

Also, one person missing from the Summers compound is Emma Frost. It seems that Scott has decided to just fully drop her now that he is back alive and now that Jean is back alive again. It makes me wonder what Emma thinks about this considering how much she fought for Scott and to keep him safe when he came back in previous issues. She had seemed like she had truly cared but guess that didn’t count for anything for Scott, of course, he has never had the best track record with treating women well. Now that I have gotten up to about issue 4 since starting this blog (sorry about that but my computer ended up having a shattered screen we had to take care of) I have to say I am enjoying this new look at the X-Men and the story they are putting together of creating this new mutant nation.

Now we move on to the book known as the Marauders. In many ways, I am loving this so far but I do have a few little gripes about it. So the book starts off with my fave X-Man of all time Kitty Pryde as she is about to head to Krakoa through one of their plant teleportation gates that only mutants can get through. However, there is a problem and Kitty can’t get through. Why? Who the hell knows…they kinda gloss over this after the initial reveal and then it never really gets talked about again. This to me seems unnecessary to advance the story as they could have just made a team to do the same thing without having someone being stuck out of Krakoa but hey I guess the little added drama of one person not having an easy way to escape missions is good for the story.

So anyway, Kitty ends up sailing to Krakoa where she ends up talking to Emma Frost. To cut things short for the sake of the length of this blog what happens is Kitty ends up heading out in a boat with a team to pick up mutants around the world who for whatever reason can’t make it to gateways whether it be because of fringe groups or governments or whatever else getting in the way. She then takes them somewhere else where they can get to Krakoa by a gate or just takes them there by boat. In one of the first missions we see a very dark version of Kitty coming out as she phases a military rifle of some sort into the legs of two soldiers basically crippling them. She gets the mutants safe and then basically announces to the world over video that her and her team are the Marauders and they will be saving any mutants who can’t make it to Krakoa. So all well and good here so far except for one thing that I’ll mention at the end of this section.

Anyway since then, Kitty has also become a pirate with her team sinking ships that are smuggling the mutant drug to nations that have not yet accepted Xaviers terms for Krakoa. She has also been installed by Emma Frost as the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Club which is one of the ruling bodies of the new nation a position Sebastian Shaw had wanted to be Red King for his son Shinobi so expect to see some drama there soon especially since I seem to have missed it at some point where Kitty had killed Shinobi in the past. So my one gripe with this series is the name Marauders. I understand it as a writer I mean they are doing the whole pirate thing so it makes sense. However, for anyone that knows X-Men history and Storm even called the naming here into question the name Marauders has a HUGE bad Connotation for the X-Men. The Marauders, for those that don’t know, were Mr. Sinisters’ personal goon squad who carried out the infamous “Mutant Massacre” in the Morlock tunnels. This is the same group that crucified Warren Worthington AKA Angel and made it where he lost his wings and ended up being transformed by Apocalypse into ArchAngel. Kitty knows ALL of this so why would she choose the name? Even with her explanation of “Heat of the Moment” I find this a little hard to believe and just wish they had gone with a different name rather than sticking a force for good with a name with such a horrible bloody history.

Next we move on to Excalibur. This is an odd little one so far. In it we see the place known as Otherworld where Morgan Lefay rules and we see the Krakoan vines making their way into her magical pool and thus messing with her powers. This seems to be being caused by some sort of experiment by Apocalypse because you know he can’t just leave things well enough alone. So we wned up with a team that is comprised of Jubilee, Psylocke, Gambit and Rogue trying to figure things out and the proverbial shit hits the fan. Brian Braddock is taken Otherworld where he gets turned dark by Lefay and he hands off his medallion of power to Psylock making her the new Captain Britain. To tell the truth I’m gonna end things here for this one because I’m having a little trouble following it since it’s trying to mix the mystical realms and the Mutant realms and then crosses over with Otherworld and it’s ties to the Mystic stuff. To me it’s a bit confusing so far but I hope it clears up soon because it is an interesting cast, especially now that Jubilee’s baby Shogo has become a huge dragon!

Now we get to X-Force. I am still catching up with this and New Mutants so the next 2 will be a bit brief. In X-Force we start off by seeing Domino trying to break up some sort of group of Anti-mutant people who are gathering. She gets caught in her disguise as she tried to infiltrate them and while lucky she gets overpowered and then we have no clue what is happening to her. We next see that Black Tom is working on the island and working as an alarm system. He has things out in the ocean and in the air that can tell who’s coming in and from what direction and such. There has been word that Domino’s been missing but suddenly it’s like “Nope she’s approaching in a plane” but what we actually see is a group of people that kinda remind me of the Reavers parachuting in right past Black Toms early warning system to invade Krakoa.

These guys end up finding and killing Charles Xavier with a bullet to the head. Wolverine and I think it was Beast as well end up taking them out but not before the damage is done. As I am still catching up on things I still haven’t read if the new resurrection processes have worked on him but as some of the #3’s seem to show that he’s around maybe I’m thinking it has but I’ll be finding that out in the next few days. Seems this group captured Domino and is using grafts of her skin and such to get through the Krakoa early warning systems by fooling it into thinking that they are her. This, of course, gets the X-Force team back together to become the more violent arm of the X-Men, as usual, being a more Black Op’s type of team and hunting down those the X-Men can’t. However, we have to see how they fare in this new world where mutants are no longer allowed to kill humans even in self-defense.

We then move on to New Mutants where the original New Mutants team with the added members of Mondo and Chamber for some reason are heading to space. Back when Cyclops was young and the older version was dead the New X-men version of Cyclops spent time with the Starjammers for a while. Now that older Cyclops is back the Starjammers now have one of the teleporting plant gates from Krakoa on their ship so the summers family can keep together as never before. So the New Mutants convince Scott to use his gate to go to the Starjammers and get their help to get to the Shi’ar Imperium and find their teammate Cannonball who has married one of the Imperial Guard and has been off in space due to this. I like that this is bringing in Cannonball and many of the original New Mutants are back together as I loved that team but this comic is just odd to me. I mean why did they add Mondo and Chamber when the rest are the original team? Why did the people of Krakoa let Doug Ramsay go on this mission knowing he is the only one to be able to really talk to Krakoa thanks to his mutant ability to understand any language. Why is it that the Starjammers are seeming like such dicks to the New Mutants when normally they have been seen as pretty supportive of the X-Men in the past. I mean in the first issue the Starjammers leave the New Mutants to be captured by the Shi’ar and just kinda leave them to it. Don’t they worry that Cyclops and the mutants might be a bit pissy that their next-gen kids are arrested and left to the Shi’ar’s mercy if they were to ever find out? Anyway, I am liking it so far with only being two issues into it but some of it just strikes me as odd. Maybe this will clear up as I read the next two issues I have.

Last and certainly least, in my opinion, is the title Fallen Angels. This to me is a HUGE shame because I remember having like 2 or 3 of the original Fallen Angels limited run back in the day and I was excited hoping it would be something similar but it’s nowhere near. Runaways is more like the old Fallen Angels, to be honest, and this new one the only real connection to the original is the name of the comic. We see Psylocke #2 (Asian Psylocke whose body Betsy used to inhabit back in the ’90s as Betsy is back in her own body as Captain Britain now) having flashbacks to her life and the hand and several other things. We find out about a drug called Overclock and we end up with a team being led by Psylocke made up of X-23 and young Cable because these guys are basically the dark brooding outcasts. We see them teaming with Mr. Sinister to find out more about this drug and take on a new baddie. All in all, I have found it very forgettable as is evidenced by the fact that I can’t even remember if I have read or even own issue #2….I think I missed it but when reading reviews online I start to think “well maybe I read that”.

To be brutally honest, when you can’t even remember if you’ve read a comic, a lot of times it’s because to you at least it’s not that good. I am willing to give it more time however and keep reading it to see if it grows on me and gets better but right now so far this is the only one in the series of X-Titles that I would not recommend in some way to anyone. I am right now only reading it to keep the full story straight since they are interweaving a lot of the story together to make a much bigger interconnected storyline for the mutants as a whole nation instead of just little teams here and there that don’t really affect the others except with the crossover here and there like it has been in the past.

For the most part, I have been enjoying all of the new Dawn of X comics with the exception of Fallen Angels. I would highly recommend it as a starting point for new readers who want to get into the X-Men world or for the old lapsed X-Men readers who may want to get back into it. I would, however, suggest trying to find the House of X and Powers of X titles to read to understand a little more of some of the changes you can expect to see in the mutant status quo that these comics have been pushing. Have you guys been keeping up with these new titles if so I would love to hear your opinions on them in the comment section below! Or let us know if these little reviews have made it where you would be wanting to check these titles out.

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