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lanternatomika 's review for:
X-Men by Jonathan Hickman Omnibus
by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu
I'm a little conflicted about how to rate this one. I'll try writing the text of the review and see where that gets me.
House and Powers of X was bold relaunch of the X-Men line that came bearing all of the crazy ideas that you'd expect from Jonathan Hickman. With that out of the way, you could only wonder what his run on the line's flagship title would be like, and...it's no HoX/PoX, let me tell you.
Hickman's tenure on the X-Men book, collected almost in its entirety in this omnibus (we'll talk about that later), reads more like an X-Men TV show. Each issue or pair of issues tells a different, self-contained story about the various going-ons in the Krakoan Age of the mutants. This stuff is great for worldbuilding, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't totally absorbed by this book whenever I picked it up.
I like that Krakoa isn't just a mutant paradise - that'd be boring! This is a setup that's built on bloody and shady foundations, and the mutants now have these weird practices that are very cultish. Every single mutant is totally onboard with what's happening on Krakoa, so the reader is left to figure out for themselves if this is all really okay. Particularly, when the mutants talk about themselves and their relation to the humans, they come dangerously close to being prejudiced against humans themselves - gaze not into the abyss and all that.
But if you're like me and you dipped your toes into this run expecting the sort of plotting and payoff that we saw in his Fantastic Four and Avengers runs, you're out of luck there! Every time Hickman starts a new plot thread, he finishes it up himself a few issues later. The upside of this is that HoX/PoX, this omnibus and maybe Inferno make for a pretty tight X-Men story. I guess my problem is that it didn't quite meet my expectations, and idk, is that Hickman's fault? Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that the X-Men team was beheaded too early, so maybe Hickman did have a plan for all this.
All this stuff aside though, it's Jonathan Hickman. His writing isn't for everybody, but if it is for you, there's more than enough to like about his run on the title. The story is backed by some jaw dropping visuals, for which this omnibus is perfect!
Now, I do wanna talk about the omnibus in particular, because I have a few problems with what Marvel has done here. I'll start with something that I thought was kinda funny - Marvel has left out the X-Men issues that were part of X of Swords, so this book will jump from issue #12 to #17. What makes this hilarious is that the story does not skip a beat, and the characters even imply that the events of X of Swords didn't matter to the cast of this series.
Less funny is the exclusion of Hickman's issues of New Mutants, which I had to go out of my way to read. A lot of this book deals with the Krakoan X-Men's interactions with their old buddies at the Shi'ar Empire, not to mention the Empyre tie-ins. That storyline is established in New Mutants, and the simple summary in here isn't enough to cover it.
The most egregious one of all, though, is the exclusion of the X-Force issue in which someone tries - and succeeds - in assassinating Xavier. I know that wasn't written by Jonathan Hickman, but it does come up in this series, and early on at that! I was pretty floored when Xavier called out humans for attempting to kill him, and I started flipping back to see if I'd somehow missed this.
While we're at it, why not throw in Planet-Size X-Men too? It was one issue!
Overall, like I said before, you can pick up HoX/PoX, the X-Men omnibus and Inferno and have a pretty good story going. I did check into the other comics in this line, and I wasn't impressed with either of them. The story isn't as interconnected across the books as I thought it'd be - even skipping the Xavier assassination issue of X-Force isn't really much of a loss. As much as I've complained about the things that were missing from this omnibus, it's priced quite reasonably, so why not?
Just check your expectations as you go in.
House and Powers of X was bold relaunch of the X-Men line that came bearing all of the crazy ideas that you'd expect from Jonathan Hickman. With that out of the way, you could only wonder what his run on the line's flagship title would be like, and...it's no HoX/PoX, let me tell you.
Hickman's tenure on the X-Men book, collected almost in its entirety in this omnibus (we'll talk about that later), reads more like an X-Men TV show. Each issue or pair of issues tells a different, self-contained story about the various going-ons in the Krakoan Age of the mutants. This stuff is great for worldbuilding, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't totally absorbed by this book whenever I picked it up.
I like that Krakoa isn't just a mutant paradise - that'd be boring! This is a setup that's built on bloody and shady foundations, and the mutants now have these weird practices that are very cultish. Every single mutant is totally onboard with what's happening on Krakoa, so the reader is left to figure out for themselves if this is all really okay. Particularly, when the mutants talk about themselves and their relation to the humans, they come dangerously close to being prejudiced against humans themselves - gaze not into the abyss and all that.
But if you're like me and you dipped your toes into this run expecting the sort of plotting and payoff that we saw in his Fantastic Four and Avengers runs, you're out of luck there! Every time Hickman starts a new plot thread, he finishes it up himself a few issues later. The upside of this is that HoX/PoX, this omnibus and maybe Inferno make for a pretty tight X-Men story. I guess my problem is that it didn't quite meet my expectations, and idk, is that Hickman's fault? Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that the X-Men team was beheaded too early, so maybe Hickman did have a plan for all this.
All this stuff aside though, it's Jonathan Hickman. His writing isn't for everybody, but if it is for you, there's more than enough to like about his run on the title. The story is backed by some jaw dropping visuals, for which this omnibus is perfect!
Now, I do wanna talk about the omnibus in particular, because I have a few problems with what Marvel has done here. I'll start with something that I thought was kinda funny - Marvel has left out the X-Men issues that were part of X of Swords, so this book will jump from issue #12 to #17. What makes this hilarious is that the story does not skip a beat, and the characters even imply that the events of X of Swords didn't matter to the cast of this series.
Less funny is the exclusion of Hickman's issues of New Mutants, which I had to go out of my way to read. A lot of this book deals with the Krakoan X-Men's interactions with their old buddies at the Shi'ar Empire, not to mention the Empyre tie-ins. That storyline is established in New Mutants, and the simple summary in here isn't enough to cover it.
The most egregious one of all, though, is the exclusion of the X-Force issue in which someone tries - and succeeds - in assassinating Xavier. I know that wasn't written by Jonathan Hickman, but it does come up in this series, and early on at that! I was pretty floored when Xavier called out humans for attempting to kill him, and I started flipping back to see if I'd somehow missed this.
While we're at it, why not throw in Planet-Size X-Men too? It was one issue!
Overall, like I said before, you can pick up HoX/PoX, the X-Men omnibus and Inferno and have a pretty good story going. I did check into the other comics in this line, and I wasn't impressed with either of them. The story isn't as interconnected across the books as I thought it'd be - even skipping the Xavier assassination issue of X-Force isn't really much of a loss. As much as I've complained about the things that were missing from this omnibus, it's priced quite reasonably, so why not?
Just check your expectations as you go in.