X-Men #11 – Review

By: Victor Gischler (writer), Al Barrionuevo (pencils), Michael Lacombe (inks), Rain Beredo (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters) and Daniel Ketchum (editor)

The Story: A one-shot where Professor X helps Jubilee deal with her vampirism by relating a story of his own past experiences with vampires.

What’s Good: This is a pretty low-commitment issue for a reader that’s easy to pick up even if you don’t know much about current X-events.  If you’ve been following X-Men since it’s launch, you know that the first 6 issues dealt with an attack by vampires on the X-Men’s Utopia headquarters.  For those who claim “nothing ever happens” in superhero comics, the big event from that series was that Jubilee was turned into a vampire.  While her vampirism was dealt with pretty well in the Wolverine and Jubliee miniseries by Kathryn Immonen & Phil Noto, there are probably a lot of fans who didn’t read that miniseries, so it’s nice to see the main X-Men series address this new aspect of a popular character.

Gischler comes up with a pretty nice way to address the issue as we see Professor X reach out to her.  The Professor really works best now when he adopts this more avuncular air (versus bossing people around) and can help the younger mutants with their problems by telling them a story.  In this case, he whips out a story from the 1950’s showing his first dealings with vampires in Africa.  It is a fun little story that (a) reinforces the Professor’s wealth of worldly experience and (b) adds some more foundation to the vampire mega-story that Gischler has been crafting over the last year.  Often these stories where a popular character relates some older story that they never bothered to mention before come off as false — as if I suddenly said to my wife, “Did I ever tell you about the time I ran into vampires in Africa before we met?” — but it really works with Xavier because he is so old.  Imagine an aging grandparent and how many times they were able to whip up some old story that you’d never heard before.  Cyclops can’t tell this story, but Xavier can.

The Barrionuevo/Lacombe art team gets the job done.  I’m not running out to buy original pages from this issue, but everything is as it should be from a story telling standpoint: solid panels that establish new scenes, clear depictions of the action, etc.  Labcombe’s inking gets a little heavy and brushy in places and I think that style works better for 1950’s Africa than 2011 Utopia, but I didn’t have any problems with the art.

Weekly Comic Book Review’s Top Picks

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Amazing Spider-Man Free Comic Book Day issue – I had a TON of books last week and many were “good” or “fine”, but I was honestly a little perplexed about which comic would get the dog bone this week until reading Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos’ FCBD entry.  It’s a must read for Spidey-fans as this wholly new story focuses on Spidey’s loss of his spider-sense and a key martial skill that he needs to learn to compensate.  Very cool and Ramos’ art is incredible (again).  Runner-up: Moon Knight #1

Most Anticipated: Amazing Spider-Man #660 – I loved #659 featuring a clever and funny script by Fred Van Lente as we saw Spidey and the FF teaming up to fight zombie pirates in the Caribbean.  But, everything got very “real” at the end of the issue when the bad guys and the FF kids showed up.  This should be a really cool issue.

Other Picks: The Unwritten #25, Elephantmen #31, FF #3, X-Men #11, Netherworld #1

Alex’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Secret Six #33 – In a week of giants like Fear Itself and the first issue of the Bendis/Maleev Moon Knight, it’s Secret Six, ever the “little title that could,” that takes the prize, and with surprising ease at that.  This issue showcased just why Gail Simone’s dastardly book is among the very best team books on the shelves, if not the best.  A strong team dynamic blends with strong character-work and surprising comedy to make this the big one for me.

Most Anticipated: Flashpoint #1 – Forgive me for my lack of creativity. Honestly, I’m not actually that pumped for Flashpoint.  At least, not in the traditional sense.  I’m merely incredibly curious as to what the hell Flashpoint is.  I know it’s an elseworlds thing that involves, erm, a “time anomaly” and I think the Reverse Flash is at the heart of it…but…yeah.  I have no idea what this is or what it’s about, particularly since those “Road to Flashpoint” issues of the Flash have been delayed significantly.  So yeah, I’m just looking forward to finding out what Flashpoint actually is.

It’s kind of unfair really, given just how amazing Journey into Mystery and PunisherMAX are looking, but them’s the breaks.

Other Picks: New Avengers #12, Birds of Prey #12, FF #3, The Flash #12, Journey into Mystery #623, PunisherMAX #13, Amazing Spider-Man #660