Madelyne Pryor has a lot to worry about. As Queen of Limbo, she has to quell constant demonic uprisings against her home. She’s also in charge of the Limbo-New York Embassy, managing mutant refugees from the fall of Krakoa, and generally dealing with a city that does not want her there — and now Orchis has gone all out on eradicating mutantkind from Earth. Things are as dark as they’ve ever gotten, and it’s time for a darker team. Dark X-Men #1 is written by Steve Foxe, drawn by Jonas Scharf, colored by Frank Martin and lettered by Clayton Cowles with a backup story written by Foxe, drawn by Nelson Dániel, colored by Martin and lettered by Cowles.
Minion Armaan Babu: Y’know, I’m glad Madelyne Pryor has her own book — because make no mistake, this is definitely, 100% Madelyne’s book, make no mistakes about it. Maybe there are other people in it, but as far as we’re concerned, their codenames amount to Minion, Minion, Minion with a Trenchcoat, Bearded Minion With a Trenchcoat and Consort. I’m enjoying it because say what you will about the villain-centric titles that Marvel puts out — they’re nearly always the most fun.
Minion Tony Thornley: It feels like we’ve been building up to this since Hellions debuted. While it was sort of unexpected, I dug it!
Dark Glee
Minion Armaan: There is a glut of, for lack of a better word, everyday villainy in the Marvel Universe. People who don’t have big plans to take over the world or grab the Cosmic Cube, but who just want to do what they want, ignore all laws possible, and perhaps do a little violence along the way. With mutants all but outlawed and the remaining X-Men forced into hiding, there’s rarely been a darker time for them, but for the mutants here? It’s just business as usual.
To catch up: Krakoa has fallen, but it was not the last (official) bastion of mutant safety. Madelyne Pryor has (somehow) convinced New York to host an embassy to Limbo, smack dab in the middle of the city, one that has proven a haven to mutants who never quite fit on Krakoa’s paradise of an island. Which means that now it’s the sole target for the public’s need to protest mutants, but with the legal protections of an embassy on one hand, and a Limbo’s worth of rebellious demons to quell on the other, that’s the least of Madelyne’s problems.
Minion Tony: So this was hinted at in the recent Amazing Spider-Man annual, of all places. The Limbo embassy has largely been ignored since Dark Web ended, mostly because it really didn’t have a good home with everything else going on. I love the idea of all the completely irredeemable bad guys finding a home in the Limbo embassy. Naturally they’re going to end up there; it’s hell-lite, and they don’t fit on Krakoa.
Also, Havok as a put-upon majordomo as much as he’s Maddy’s consort is just fun as hell. Pardon the pun.
Minion Armaan: There are three things I enjoy about this book: The first is just how cheerful the darker mutants are. Namely, Emplate, Azazel and Zero. They all have some very complicated backstories, and doubtless some very complicated motivations of their own, but you wouldn’t know it here. They’re just Maddie’s Minions; she points, and they say, “How bloody?” Add in a reprogrammed Wolverine android named Albert, and you’ve got yourself a fine kill crew, largely filled with people who are keeping things a lot more upbeat than any of the other X-books out there. It’s refreshing.
Minion Tony: It’s almost like they’re eager to @#$% some $#!^ up after being pent up on Krakoa for two and a half years. And who doesn’t love when villains can step into an anti-hero role? Let the bad guys kill the worse guys. It’s a hell of a lot of fun. Foxe and Scharf do so much character work in the first six or seven pages. The two-page spread of the chaos in the embassy around Alex and Maddy is SUCH a delightful sequence. It contains so much story in just those pages.
Plus, it hints at some additional future members of the team.
Minion Armaan: The second thing I enjoy is seeing Madelyne put front in center as more than just a one-note villain. Her road from resurrection to Queen of Limbo was a beautiful one, and I’m very invested in her story. She’s bitter about humanity, and at this point in time, she has every right to be — but more importantly, she has made none of them a priority. As far as she’s concerned, they’re to be swatted away like flies if they get in her way, ignored if not — her goals are finding a way to the missing mutants, and returning them home safe.
Minion Tony: That’s one thing I really loved about the first two pages. Maddy just has this look of disgust. She’s above this all but she CAN’T be. Alex is doing his damnedest to convince her to help, and she shows him that he doesn’t need to, she’s already going to, and already has the plan in motion. Also, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Mercy Crown and the monologue that goes with its reveal.
Minion Armaan: The more villainous cast of this book make no apologies for who they are. I’m not saying they’re sympathetic, or that their actions are laudable, but in them, we see the last remnants of what Krakoa was meant to be — a place where mutants are free to be themselves, unconstrained by conventional expectations, free to focus on the important things. It may be a dark and twisted version of the dream Krakoa represented, but as I said before, it makes for a refreshing change of pace.
The third thing I’m enjoying about this book is … well, we’ll get to that later. Because the villainous mutants aren’t the only members of this book’s cast.
Dark Action
Minion Armaan: The Dark X-Men’s first mission: rescue a single mutant child from an Orchis convoy. Carmen Cruz, otherwise known as Gimmick, from the Children of the Atom series, barely got to enjoy living on Krakoa before it fell. She and her friends pretended to be X-Men for a short while before Carmen found out she actually had an X-gene, gaining herself an instant island invite. With Krakoa a no-go zone, however, she’s forced to hide out with her friends, disguising herself as best she can.
Being betrayed at her partner Buddy’s home, by Buddy’s dad … it’s an old mutant tale, but one that always hits hard. Betrayed in the one place she thought was safe, subject to a fear and hatred that overpowers everything else. This book might be gleefully violent, but it does have its moments that hit you.
Minion Tony: Yes! That broke my heart. I remember getting hints in Children of the Atom that Buddy’s dad was a bigot in a few ways. It’s heartbreaking to get that confirmation.
Also, this series is already showing one of the traits I’ve enjoyed the most in the current era of X-Men comics. Foxe is enjoying playing with all the toys in the toybox. The sequence with the COTA kids feels like that series has continued all along since its conclusion. It’s an advancement of their story, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve been in limbo (lowercase) all this time. Their story has been continuing behind the scenes, and Dark X-Men is dropping us back into the middle of it.
Minion Armaan: Two groups of X-Men show up at the same time to rescue Carmen, but they leave as one, adding the relative (and one more literal) angels to Madelyne’s darker team. I will admit, Marvel Snap has kind of ruined me here, I have to keep reminding myself that Gambit is not, actually, a powerful one-shot destroyer of people but an honest-to-goodness We Don’t Kill superhero.
It’s a relatively short scene, with the backup comic in play, but I do enjoy how the artwork seems to be having as much fun as the writing is. Everyone looks great, everyone looks interesting. It’s the coloring that really shines for me, though — it does wonderful work with shadows, it’s a softer tone that keeps this book from feeling too silly, and makes the more serious moments work. This is a world of nighttime and hellfire, and Frank Martin does a beautiful job of capturing it all.
Minion Tony: Oh, big time. And it’s more than just the requisite “five pages of punching” that we get in every Marvel comic. This is again about desperate people doing desperate things. But there’s great little touches beyond that. Gambit using tire spikes instead of cards. Azazel’s more brutal way of teleporting through a fight. Whoever mentioned Archangel has a healing factor, he’ll be fine. It’s playing with the toys in the toybox again, and Scharf is having fun putting it on the page, while Martin is just deepening the whole thing.
Minion Armaan: The last scene before the backup teases interesting things ahead for Madelyne, as an even more unapologetic alternate universe version of her left over from Secret Wars is apparently coming into play. Apparently the more evil a Goblin Queen you are, the more scanty your costume gets.
I have to admit, I am not quite sure where this comic is headed, but I certainly hope it has the space to get there. I’m curious to see where this is all going.
Tony: It seems to me to be filling the space that has been missing for a while since Hellions ended. Bad people beating up worse people in bad ways for noble reasons. And I dig that. It’s not the strongest of the debuts, I think, but it might be the most fun.
A Dark Week In Limbo
Minion Armaan: The third thing I love about this book is Havok. Not the character himself, but his … place of ineffectualness. I love it when a story has an ambitious, mistreated, ineffectual #2. Someone who believes he holds a position of influence, but who has little actual agency at the end of the day. Havok is definitely in that position here with Maddy, something made abundantly clear in the backup story. Alex is much less a partner than he is a … comfort blanket. Someone for Maddy to come home to, a tool to use as she wishes, and she knows very, very well how to keep him there.
It would work wonderfully, if there wasn’t some part of Alex that still believes he has any say in what happens. He believes he is placed to do good. To make a difference. To find a sense of purpose.
He is sorely mistaken.
There is a hopelessness here, a bleakness and tragedy, in the face of eternal hope. If Alex could be a mutant Captain America, he would be, but he’s just so easily led astray. He’s fighting to legitimize and brighten up an embassy full of people who want neither thing to happen — but as long as he’s in a place where he can’t actually get in the way of what people want to do, he can be ignored. It’s beautifully tragic.
Minion Tony: So I genuinely didn’t like the backup much on the initial read. The tone felt like a mismatch, and Daniel’s art was a bit too cartoony. Thinking of it from that perspective, though, really improves it in my mind.
Minion Armaan: Dániel’s art definitely leans a little sillier, as does this backup as a whole. The bleakness is an undercurrent — the overlay is almost all humor. The one exception is, naturally, the scenes in which Madelyne is the sole focus. Her scene with Ben Reilly in particular, the petulant, memory-lost clone of Spider-Man whose inclusion here makes me wonder whether we’re going to be seeing more of him in this book. I think he’d fit right in.
Minion Tony: Agreed! I think Chasm still has a lot of story to tell (especially since they’ve teased Ben back to himself in LA a few times), and he’d make an excellent addition to the team. Also, frankly, he deserves to get his memories restored. Everyone did him dirty after Maddy had hers restored, and no one did the same for Ben! I mean, yeah, his attack against New York was awful, but Jean and Peter were right there together.
Darker Tidings
- Madelyne retaining her power to turn mundane items into cartoonishly evil demon-things is a delight.
- I do feel bad for that car owner when he jumps back in to discover the interior redecorated with Orchis guts though.
- A demonic version of Cerebro is fascinating. How does it differ from regular Cerebros? Can only Hell-touched psychics use it? Does it detect new mutants, but only if they’re evil? So many questions.
- Carmen’s actually met Maggott before — he was one of the first mutants she ever met. You can see her pain that he doesn’t remember the meeting at all.
- Havok’s pain at Maddy destroying the really nice sheets is something felt by every parent in the world.
- Wait, since when is Kangaroo a mutant?!
- This is the FoX mini most like Uncanny Avengers in that I see a ton of story potential beyond Fall of X. Hope something like that happens.
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Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
