Exiles

Exiles 

By Judd Winick & Mike McKone (Marvel Comics)
ISBN: 0-7851-0833-5

This mellow piece of fluff takes Marvel’s What If concept up a level by having an amorphous team of young mutants from alternate universes team up to correct mistakes and clear blockages in the fabric of the multiverse.

Reality is a plethora of differing dimensions, you see, and if things go awry in one it can have a cumulative and ultimately catastrophic effect on all of them. Led by Blink (who had her own miniseries and starred in the X-Men extended storyline Age of Apocalypse) this team of rejects from their own realities, acting like the cast of the OC in fancy dress zap from place to place doing the Dyno-Rod thing.

Notwithstanding the hackneyed concept, however, it’s not a bad package, but this first volume – which rushes through an origin of sorts and sends them to an Earth where their great mentor is evil and another where they have to re-engineer the X-Men’s greatest tragedy – relies overmuch on a familiarity with the minutiae of Marvel continuity that might deter the casual reader.

If you’re prepared to accept the fact that you won’t get all the gags and references you might enjoy the light tone, sharp dialogue and lush illustration, and unlike most comics books, at least the dead stay dead here. I think. Perhaps. Maybe.

© 2001, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2 Replies to “Exiles”

  1. I am currently on volume 13 of the, so far, 14 TPB’s of this series and I must confess I really like it.

    It is true this first collection has some pretty tuff hurdles to get over, but after that I think the series really got a grip of itself.

    Since this is the-heroes-you-know-but-then-again-not, the writers have quite free hands creating their adventures. Because of that there has been some story arcs where you wish that they REALLY hadn’t killed off that hero. But this just makes the book stronger in my opinion!

  2. I must admit I’ve only seen a few so far, so I can’t make any kind of global judgement, but under my self-imposed remit of broadening the general appeal of comics – especially by passing them off as ‘proper books’, one of my key criteria has to be

    ‘how confusing is the thing for a first-timer?’

    Under that condition, the clever role-switching and in-joking is utterly wasted on a Civilian who is probably still baffled about which X-Men are the proper ones (Ultimates, Marvel U, kids cartoon or Movie) and why Spider-Man is so equally baffling.

    That, by the by, is why I try to use TV and Film references whenever I can, since they are far and away the most universal cultural sources in media – although soon to be overtaken by MySpace, I’m sure – and why DC are so smart to rationalize their comic universe to their animation, TV and Movie franchises.

    I’m still freaked out by Pa Kent being drawn like the guy from ‘Dukes of Hazard’ though!

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