Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Extraordinary X-Men #1
Marvel Comics
Lemire, Ramos, Olazaba & Delgado
"Extraordinary X-Men" launches the next big X-Men book by rounding up some of the usual suspects for the team. The comic is an average read. If you've read an X-Men book that sort of starts out a team then this is all very familiar. At five dollars, for thirty pages, I don't recommend picking this up. Perhaps the series will pick up in the coming issues, but as a first issue this was a tame read.
Storm now leads the team. The comic mixes up rescuing new characters from the persecution by regular humans along with rounding up veterans to help. Illyana gets a lot of panel time as she uses her powers to swoop in and rescue characters and she also pays a visit to her estranged brother.
Some of the other classic characters get some play here and the comic ends with a nice surprise but nothing else really happens. I would be hard pressed to be able to tell anyone what this comic book is "about" as a series. That is a problem.
I'm a big fan of Ramos but this comic book is extremely uneven. I found the sequence with Illyana and her brother to be fantastic in terms of the details in the pencils, but lacking because Peter (Piotr) has the exact same look on his face the entire time. Additionally, some of the panels where Piotr is alone are extremely detailed while others seem to have limited inks. This trend continues throughout the book. Some great pages and some not-so-great.
"Extraordinary X-Men" is off to a very slow start. The comic focuses on rounding up X-Men veterans while peppering in rescue missions of newer characters. Storm leads the team and she gets a lot panel time in the comic but she isn't established in any unique way. The pencils are great in some sequences and lacking detail in others. The comic is priced at five dollars for thirty pages of story and it really isn't worth it. I would sit this out and wait to see if the story gets off the ground in any meaningful way.
2 out of 5 Geek Goggles
