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By various (Marvel Comics)
ISBN 0-7851-0749-5
Extraordinarily poor example of how to cash in on a Big Budget Blockbuster, this slim adaptation of the first X-Men movie (47 pages), scripted by Ralph Macchio and illustrated by Anthony Williams and Andy Lanning, is augmented by trio of past tales to flesh out the characters and fill up the extra pages.
The adaptation itself is sound, if a little poorly paced, but the art is muddied by a presumed attempt to mirror the muted darkness of the film. If you don’t know the plot some humans are mutating to the next stage of evolution, the humans are frightened and the mutants themselves are splintering into two factions, one for co-existence the other for separation and/or conquest.
My major problem with this is confusion. If the reader is a newcomer fresh from the film, the radically different characters in the rest of the book – but with the same names – must be baffling. The costumes are different, the powers and histories don’t match, and even the four colour palette of ‘proper comic art’ is totally unlike the initial story.
Also included are the two-part ‘Magneto Triumphant’ story from Uncanny X-Men #112 and 113, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the story of Rogue’s joining the X-Men from #171 (by Claremont and Walt Simonson) and the first four chapters of the ‘Weapon X’ semi-origin of Wolverine from Marvel Comics Presents #72-75.
Irrespective of the quality of the reprints selected, these are not the same X-Men as the film features and not even the same kind of story. To leap from the stripped down film script where almost all the players are ciphers to Chris Claremont at the peak of his hidden history and extended sub-plotting phase of writing is cruel and self-defeating.
Surely The House of Ideas could do better than this?
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