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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
An X-Men story involving multiple dimensions as well as some story elements taken from the Otherworld/Captain Britain lore could turn out to be pretty heavily bogged down if Hickman wasn't writing it. A very enjoyable and great X-Men event. The beginning is a little slow and probably could've been cut down, and the Hellions storyline almost felt worthless to the actual plot but other then that it was a fun read. Apocalypse is interesting to have as a protagonist, and Cyclops has a few good moments towards the end which was cool for me as I'm not a Scott Summers fan. Saturnyne really gets the blood boiling. It is lore heavy and requires most people to look up a good amount of stuff, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Also cool that Hickman got to tidy up the Captain Britain Corps ending from his Avengers Time Runs Out storyline from years ago.
I also read this between where it takes place in the X-Men Hickman Omnibus which I think greatly added to the enjoyment.
Also cool that Hickman got to tidy up the Captain Britain Corps ending from his Avengers Time Runs Out storyline from years ago.
I also read this between where it takes place in the X-Men Hickman Omnibus which I think greatly added to the enjoyment.
Got this + House of X/Powers of X for Christmas (2022) and finally managed to finish this. A step down from HoX/PoX, but I still found myself wildly entertained with this. The Krakoan era of X-Men has been mostly outstanding for me, and with Sins of Sinister recently starting with a bang, the Fall of X preview issues announced, and Fall of X arriving this year, it’s certainly going to be an interesting 2023.
Loved the varied art in this book, and the focus shifted to a number of characters who typically aren’t always at the forefront. The designs of the characters from Arrako were pretty rad too and while several bits of the finale felt rushed (Gorgon vs The White Sword, the return of Captain Britain Corps) it was captivating, to say the least, and very visually appealing.
From reading reactions, some seem to really dislike the subverting of expectations with regard to the tournament, but if we’re being real, I feel like watching X amount of “fight to the deaths” would have gotten stale extremely quickly, so I wasn’t really opposed to turning the tournament on its head with Saturnyne’s games.
Definitely felt the length of this one though!
Loved the varied art in this book, and the focus shifted to a number of characters who typically aren’t always at the forefront. The designs of the characters from Arrako were pretty rad too and while several bits of the finale felt rushed (Gorgon vs The White Sword, the return of Captain Britain Corps) it was captivating, to say the least, and very visually appealing.
From reading reactions, some seem to really dislike the subverting of expectations with regard to the tournament, but if we’re being real, I feel like watching X amount of “fight to the deaths” would have gotten stale extremely quickly, so I wasn’t really opposed to turning the tournament on its head with Saturnyne’s games.
Definitely felt the length of this one though!
adventurous
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
love it down! just good fun
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Like all events, did this NEED to be 720 pages? No, of course not. I really liked the ending, though. It does a lot of worldbuilding related to Apocalypse and has the mutants face their first real crisis since the last event, which I also thought worked well. Had it not been so bloated, it’d have been fantastic. I didn’t know much about Apocalypse backstory but this seems like it expands a lot on what was hugely contrived before. Though, the inception of the event was also wildly contrived. A strange contest where people had to find swords and then do weird feats generally not involving swords but it was all machinations. I think if you don’t like the end this would be a massive, massive struggle.
Jonathan Hickman, head of all-things X these days, leads Marvel's merry mutants on an epic quest to determine the fate of the mutant island-nation Krakoa, as well as it splintered sibling island, Arakko, the whole of planet Earth, and the multiverse itself. Drawn into a massive Olympics-styled game of challenges, the various X-teams must compete against Apocalypse's wife, Genesis, and their offspring - the original Four Horsemen - as well as the whims of Saturnyne, the ruler of Otherworld, a planetary hub straight out of a bad fantasy novel situated at the center of the multiverse.
It is, safe to say, a lot. Sometimes overwhelmingly so, as Hickman and the various writers attempt to tell a cohesive, and very large, narrative that reaches back thousands of years, to a time when Krakoa and Arakko formed a single island, and into the distant lands of Otherworld that have fallen beneath the rule Genesis and her children. The result is a 700+ page, 22-part crossover that encompasses the entirety of Marvel's X-line, plus a couple X of Swords one-shots for good measure.
While I felt a lot of X of Swords was good, it's also downright excessive. You can feel the weight of this whole endeavor bogging down the middle chapters, where Hickman's writers struggle to come up with enough filler to keep things running, but it's evident they feel the exhausting slog of it all just as much as the reader. The event starts off well-enough as Krakoa's ten defenders seek to claim their mystical swords, which will grant them access to Saturnyne's challenges, but the actual contest itself is... well, kinda lame. There's the requisite duels to the death - a thorny game made thornier by the knowledge that those X-folks who die in Otherworld cannot be resurrected as they once were - but also arm wrestling, drinking games, and eating contests. It's hard to maintain interest when the writer's are phoning it in and stuffing the premise with every outlandish conceit they can come up to meet their monthly page counts, and I found myself wishing a number of times that this book wasn't so ludicrously, and needlessly, long.
By the time the grand finale comes along, it's a relief to know the end is in sight for this overstuffed, 22-parts-because-WE-CAN! event. To their credit, Hickman and co-writer Tini Howard, do write the hell out of this massive, extended war scene in the aptly named X of Swords: Destruction one-shot that caps off the story. Unfortunately, so much of X of Swords is still built off Excalibur, the weakest book in the Dawn of X line-up, and it hardly makes that series tolerable even in hindsight. And, given the state of comics, X of Swords fails to provide any real sort of closure, even as it hints at events yet to come. Doubtless, a number of story threads still left dangling will be start to be woven together in the Reign of X that follows, but to go through all 22 issues collected here and have so little resolution to show for it all is a frustrating point of contention.
Despite the story itself feeling hollow and, ultimately, disappointing, it sure does look pretty thanks to a lineup of artists that include Pepe Larraz, Lenil Yu, Mahmud Asrar, and Viktor Bogdanovic, to name a few. Larraz's pencils in particular strike a strong note for me, and coupled with Marte Garcia's colors, we get a number of eye-catching panels that positively pop. On the Bogdanovic front...yeah, the dude is very obviously inspired by Greg Capullo, to the point that when I first confronted his work in Wolverine I had to check the credits page to verify it wasn't Capullo, but, hey, if you're gonna imitate a big-name artist, Capullo's a damn good penciler to model yourself after.
X of Swords marks the first big crossover between the various X-books under Hickman's watch, and, unfortunately, it tackles some of the least interesting elements of this corner of the Marvel Universe. (If I never have to read another issue of Excalibur or step foot in Otherworld ever again, I'll be OK.) Even though it misses the mark in a number of important areas, and frustratingly avoids a number of bigger issues introduced in House of X and Powers of X, it does leave a few tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs to lead into the Reign of X segment of Hickman's grand opus.
It is, safe to say, a lot. Sometimes overwhelmingly so, as Hickman and the various writers attempt to tell a cohesive, and very large, narrative that reaches back thousands of years, to a time when Krakoa and Arakko formed a single island, and into the distant lands of Otherworld that have fallen beneath the rule Genesis and her children. The result is a 700+ page, 22-part crossover that encompasses the entirety of Marvel's X-line, plus a couple X of Swords one-shots for good measure.
While I felt a lot of X of Swords was good, it's also downright excessive. You can feel the weight of this whole endeavor bogging down the middle chapters, where Hickman's writers struggle to come up with enough filler to keep things running, but it's evident they feel the exhausting slog of it all just as much as the reader. The event starts off well-enough as Krakoa's ten defenders seek to claim their mystical swords, which will grant them access to Saturnyne's challenges, but the actual contest itself is... well, kinda lame. There's the requisite duels to the death - a thorny game made thornier by the knowledge that those X-folks who die in Otherworld cannot be resurrected as they once were - but also arm wrestling, drinking games, and eating contests. It's hard to maintain interest when the writer's are phoning it in and stuffing the premise with every outlandish conceit they can come up to meet their monthly page counts, and I found myself wishing a number of times that this book wasn't so ludicrously, and needlessly, long.
By the time the grand finale comes along, it's a relief to know the end is in sight for this overstuffed, 22-parts-because-WE-CAN! event. To their credit, Hickman and co-writer Tini Howard, do write the hell out of this massive, extended war scene in the aptly named X of Swords: Destruction one-shot that caps off the story. Unfortunately, so much of X of Swords is still built off Excalibur, the weakest book in the Dawn of X line-up, and it hardly makes that series tolerable even in hindsight. And, given the state of comics, X of Swords fails to provide any real sort of closure, even as it hints at events yet to come. Doubtless, a number of story threads still left dangling will be start to be woven together in the Reign of X that follows, but to go through all 22 issues collected here and have so little resolution to show for it all is a frustrating point of contention.
Despite the story itself feeling hollow and, ultimately, disappointing, it sure does look pretty thanks to a lineup of artists that include Pepe Larraz, Lenil Yu, Mahmud Asrar, and Viktor Bogdanovic, to name a few. Larraz's pencils in particular strike a strong note for me, and coupled with Marte Garcia's colors, we get a number of eye-catching panels that positively pop. On the Bogdanovic front...yeah, the dude is very obviously inspired by Greg Capullo, to the point that when I first confronted his work in Wolverine I had to check the credits page to verify it wasn't Capullo, but, hey, if you're gonna imitate a big-name artist, Capullo's a damn good penciler to model yourself after.
X of Swords marks the first big crossover between the various X-books under Hickman's watch, and, unfortunately, it tackles some of the least interesting elements of this corner of the Marvel Universe. (If I never have to read another issue of Excalibur or step foot in Otherworld ever again, I'll be OK.) Even though it misses the mark in a number of important areas, and frustratingly avoids a number of bigger issues introduced in House of X and Powers of X, it does leave a few tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs to lead into the Reign of X segment of Hickman's grand opus.
A great example of what a crossover event can be. It doesn’t have to be paint by the numbers and can be quite subversive. X of Swords adds a lot of backstory to Krakoa and Apocalypse’s family. It moves forward ongoing plots and sets up future stories (like S.W.O.R.D.). It starts off a bit slow with the gathering of all the swords, though I actually liked how character focused those issues were. When the actual tournament starts it becomes quite unpredictable and amazing. Loved most of the art as well, especially Pepe Larraz’s stuff on Creation/Stasis/Destruction.
adventurous
fast-paced
This was an absolutely wild ride that I loved every minute of. Was it absolute perfect? No, but I still had an amazing time and really enjoyed what was done along the way. There are some deeper cuts that can make this more daunting for newer fans, though. If not for Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men and knowledge of the first Excalibur run, I don’t know if I’d fully appreciate Saturnyne, Jim Jaspers, the Fury, or even Merlin and Roma. With all that in mind, it was a fantastic crossover in my book.
First of all, the fact that they were able to pull off an event of this scale as seamlessly as they did is astounding. This wasn’t a core event book with tie ins surrounding it, this was an event told through 8 different titles, all with different creative teams. Yet the quality never wavered (except for one issue of Wolverine, but I think that’s more a personal taste issue than anything, and even that, looking back on it again, it turned out to be a pretty spectacular issue overall). Some of this could be attributed to the first half being able to focus on individual characters, but it remained seamless throughout.
I think some of my affinity for this book is based on the media I grew up with. Shows like Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown, even Dragon Ball Z, focused on “fetch quests” to collect certain items and share what their unique abilities were. I was in my element reading those stories, as they highlighted various mutants acquiring their blades. I do admit that the contest then became very unbalanced through the later part of the event, but it was quickly clear that it was on purpose. Saturnyne was up to something and we needed to see that. I also loved the trope of having one team desperately far behind only to have one unexpected contest even the playing field so the final round still had the highest stakes.
All of the titles managed to balance humor with the seriousness of what was going on. The first battle, the event with Rockslide, all of that carried weight. But then you get moments like Magik misspelling the word “magic” in a spelling bee, and it lightens the mood.
Fans had complained there was a lack of stakes in the new Krakoa era, but this event showed multiple ways that death still matters. Whether it’s corrupted resurrections or death being used to hide machinations of another character by erasing knowledge gained since their last backup was established, both scenarios highlight the seriousness of dying, even in the current era.
On top of all this, there was excellent character work. I loved the development of Apocalypse (a character I normally don’t enjoy), kid Cable, Storm, Wolverine, Cypher. There was a lot to love. And even characters who played a smaller role (like some of my favorites, Jean, Scott, and Kate), the moments they got were incredibly important. The Scott and Jean interaction with the Quiet Council was one of my favorite scenes from an event filled with incredible scenes. The cherry on the sundae was the truly epic conclusion that had the scope of a company wide event while being focused just on X-Men characters.
I was a little hesitant going into this book based on some mixed reviews I had seen as the individual issues were coming out, but I loved it from start to finish (I also say that as someone whose least favorite Krakoa book has been Excalibur). I remain hugely invested in seeing what comes next from this nearly incomprehensibly talented group of creators.
First of all, the fact that they were able to pull off an event of this scale as seamlessly as they did is astounding. This wasn’t a core event book with tie ins surrounding it, this was an event told through 8 different titles, all with different creative teams. Yet the quality never wavered (except for one issue of Wolverine, but I think that’s more a personal taste issue than anything, and even that, looking back on it again, it turned out to be a pretty spectacular issue overall). Some of this could be attributed to the first half being able to focus on individual characters, but it remained seamless throughout.
I think some of my affinity for this book is based on the media I grew up with. Shows like Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown, even Dragon Ball Z, focused on “fetch quests” to collect certain items and share what their unique abilities were. I was in my element reading those stories, as they highlighted various mutants acquiring their blades. I do admit that the contest then became very unbalanced through the later part of the event, but it was quickly clear that it was on purpose. Saturnyne was up to something and we needed to see that. I also loved the trope of having one team desperately far behind only to have one unexpected contest even the playing field so the final round still had the highest stakes.
All of the titles managed to balance humor with the seriousness of what was going on. The first battle, the event with Rockslide, all of that carried weight. But then you get moments like Magik misspelling the word “magic” in a spelling bee, and it lightens the mood.
Fans had complained there was a lack of stakes in the new Krakoa era, but this event showed multiple ways that death still matters. Whether it’s corrupted resurrections or death being used to hide machinations of another character by erasing knowledge gained since their last backup was established, both scenarios highlight the seriousness of dying, even in the current era.
On top of all this, there was excellent character work. I loved the development of Apocalypse (a character I normally don’t enjoy), kid Cable, Storm, Wolverine, Cypher. There was a lot to love. And even characters who played a smaller role (like some of my favorites, Jean, Scott, and Kate), the moments they got were incredibly important. The Scott and Jean interaction with the Quiet Council was one of my favorite scenes from an event filled with incredible scenes. The cherry on the sundae was the truly epic conclusion that had the scope of a company wide event while being focused just on X-Men characters.
I was a little hesitant going into this book based on some mixed reviews I had seen as the individual issues were coming out, but I loved it from start to finish (I also say that as someone whose least favorite Krakoa book has been Excalibur). I remain hugely invested in seeing what comes next from this nearly incomprehensibly talented group of creators.
I quite enjoyed it. Some parts, especially with Apocalypse, were kinda confusing. But I soldiered on, and the majority of the book was really great. Hellions was a fun side rimo, I love what they've done with Sinister. The gathering of swords was cool, I loved the character based stories. The competition itself was oddly anticlimactic, but eventually I understood it was supposed to all feel random and arbitrary and wacky. The montage of "battles" was hilarious and great. For such a sprawling crossover, it managed to hold together well. Great art throughout.