X-Men #1 – Review

by Victor Gischler (writer), Paco Medina (artist)

The Story: Spinning out of last week’s The Death of Dracula one-shot, the vampires of the world unite and decide to send a suicide bomber to San Francisco, not to kill innocent people, but to infect them.  While the X-Men begin to gather their forces and intelligence to better combat the impending invasion, former mutant Jubilee, a victim of the suicide bomber, begins to exhibit several vampiric characteristics.

What’s Good: Gischler’s script is tightly plotted and well paced as the vampire’s plans begin moving forward the second we open the front cover of this issue.  The opening scene is an intriguing take on the suicide bomber mixed with a vampire sensibility that I’ve not seen elsewhere, and for that the writer gets some cool points from me.  He’s managed to get the voices of most of the main X-Men done, as well.  To contrast, Matt Fraction’s first issue of Uncanny X-Men had Cyclops saying, “Suck it,” to Magneto, which, it’s fair to say, raised an eyebrow.  However, here Gischler’s Cyclops reads as the Scott Summers that I’ve been reading about for decades.  His handling of the return of the much-loved character of Jubilee to the X-Books is also handled nicely.  I bought into the fact that she’s matured and changed in a believable manner, and it made the beginning of her vampiric transformation that much more important to me.  There are also nice little touches of continuity that always please me, such as Wolverine choosing Angel as back-up considering what they’ve been through with X-Force or Storm wanting in on the mission due to her past with Dracula.  Why this isn’t the first issue of a miniseries and not an ongoing is still beyond me, but it’s still well told.