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There are three X-Men comics this week, but
only one of them is completing a storyline, so that's the
one I'm worried about.
X-Men: First Class #3 completes
the series' first two-part story, a trip to Monster Island.
There's a plot, of course. It involves Mastermind
posing as Professor X and tricking the X-Men into going on a
mission that he hopes will be suicidal. Eventually the
heroes figure out what's going on. But that's not
really the point. Mainly, it's an excuse for Jeff
Parker and Roger Cruz to have fun with huge Silver Age
monsters.
As usual, First Class is more
interested in having fun with the 1960s toys than in making
use of the X-Men's themes. It's a series of light,
simple superhero stories that works because Jeff Parker
knows how to put that sort of thing together, and because
it's just kind of fun to take the founding team back to
childhood. You know the deal by now, and the shift to
a two-part format won't significantly change the title's
appeal.
A more interesting point is the title's
unusual position in the line, hovering between the Marvel
Universe on the one hand, and the all-ages books on the
other. To all intents and purposes, First Class
doubles as Marvel Adventures: X-Men, despite
featuring a line-up that will be unfamiliar with readers
outside the traditional Marvel audience. In itself,
that's not a problem.
But if it's going to work for that
audience, it needs to tread carefully when it comes to
assuming knowledge of the Marvel Universe. The pay-off for
this story is the revelation that the bad guy is Mastermind,
who's out for revenge on the X-Men after being turned into a
statue. Yet, Mastermind's barely even been mentioned
in the story before, except as a sight gag in part 1 where
they were using him as a hatstand. So if you don't
know the character already, he kind of appears out of the
blue. And there's no real explanation of how he ended
up as a statue, other than the bare statement that the
Stranger did it.
Now, I'm not saying that readers won't be
able to follow the story. On the contrary, all the
information is there, albeit in summary form. But if
you don't know the story already, then Mastermind and his
back story suddenly come barrelling in from nowhere at the
last moment. And if this book is meant to appeal to
the Marvel Adventures audience, I'm not sure it's
wise to assume any familiarity with stories that came out 42
years ago.
That worry aside, however, it's another
successful issue from Parker and Cruz. There's also a
brief four-page back-up, written by Parker and drawn by
Colleen Coover, in which Jean bonds with the Scarlet Witch.
It's light on plot, but it's extremely charming, and
Coover's art captures the spirit of a more innocent era of
comics without being retro in the slightest. If this
is a pilot for a back-up series - and it certainly reads
like one - then I hope they follow through on it.
Rating: A-
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