Welcome to Graymatter Lane, a place where mutants anywhere in the world can come together to teach one another the skills needed for their survival. With instructors including Wolverine, Beast, Prodigy and Magneto, and a campus unlike any before seen, it’s the crossroads of the X-universe as a student body from across the globe works to take mutantkind to the next step in their evolution — and to cope with a brewing threat to all of their number. X-Men United #1 is written by Eve Ewing, drawn by Tiago Palma, colored by Brian Reber and lettered by Joe Sabino.
What makes a memorable X-Men #1? There are your history-making bestsellers (X-Men Vol. 2 #1), your post-event reboots (Wolverine & the X-Men #1) or your bold new approaches (House of X #1). But no matter the era, all of the successful X-Men #1s have the same thing in common: Top-tier writing and artistic talent presenting bold new visions of a line’s status quo.
Eve Ewing and Tiago Palma’s X-Men United has been advertised as “an ambitious series” and an “eXciting initiative” in solicits, with its central location of Graymatter Lane billed as “the central hub for mutant interaction across the world and beyond!” Unfortunately, X-Men United #1 has very little to offer in the way of ambition or excitement, and far from being a bold new vision of a new status quo, does very little to establish itself as the new flagship for the line.
Mismatched creators
What I’m about to say is incredibly mean, but we have to start with Tiago Palma’s art. Historically, new X-books — especially those proposing bold, new beginnings — launch with superstar artists. Even if they’re only around for the first arc, you want your book to look amazing. It’s why you bring in someone like Chris Bachalo or Olivier Coipel or Pepe Larraz or Valerio Schiti or Mahmud Asrar. More recently, you go for a recognizable name with a well-known style like Ryan Stegman or David Marquez.
You do not launch a new X-book with artwork that looks like the fill-in from the fifth issue when your superstar is running behind on deadlines. And with all respect to Palma, he’s not a superstar. Maybe he will be someday, but right now, especially compared to Carmen Carnero’s beautiful, naturalistic artwork in Exceptional X-Men, this is an enormous step down in quality. Something a book with stakes this big can’t afford.
The result is a book that is supposed to be happening on a limitless astral plane and yet seems entirely grounded and dull. What should a Danger Room session on the astral plane taught by both Wolverines look like? I’d argue it should look anything but lifeless and boring. A group meeting of our entire main X-cast should not look like they were shoved into a basement cave.
Readers looking for something to spark the imagination or even anything vaguely visually interesting will be disappointed. We don’t need every artist to be as technically proficient as Frank Quitely or John Cassaday, but a little dreamlike ingenuity would go a long way.
What are we doing here anyway?
But it’s not just Palma who’s to blame. While Eve Ewing is an extremely talented writer (whose Exceptional I quite enjoyed) and an excellent pick to recenter this line, readers looking for a book that’s supposed to tie together the frayed threads of the X-family in its many confusing locales will be surprised to find that X-Men United #1 is pretty much just Exceptional X-Men #14. Ewing maintains the Exceptional cast in the foreground at the expense of the pitch of the book.
Speaking of frayed threads, this issue has a very loose grasp of the current continuity of the rest of the books. Emma castigates her fellow mutants for their “internecine grievances,” ignoring the fact that Rogue and Cyclops already made up (not that their argument made any sense to begin with) in the pages of Gail Simone’s Uncanny X-Men. Rogue boldly claims everyone in her present company has betrayed each other before, though I’m not sure when. Cyclops stomps out with a pissy attitude and yet another nonsensical argument about “being a target.”
There is very little here that could be categorized as a mission statement. After finishing this first issue, you won’t have an understanding of what the X-Men are doing or why, who or what the school is for, or why X-Men who haven’t taught in years are suddenly jumping back into the classroom like it’s ever worked for anyone before. You’ll have no idea which mutants are allowed into Graymatter Lane and which aren’t, what the physics are, what mutants can do there and not in the physical world, or what happens to mutant bodies when they’re in Graymatter. I even questioned whether this was the astral plane or if I completely missed something. None of these are questions I should be asking.
What you will be treated to instead is the most random collection of mutant D-listers to grace the pages of an X-book in quite a while. You know it’s bad when I (a devoted fan of many a mutant weirdo) took one look at the cast page and went, “I’m sorry, who is that?” I just know there are gonna be some bitter X-fans out there this week who will not understand why their favorite forgotten cast member was skipped over for Wolf Cub (you read that right. This is an X-Men #1 that thinks you care about Wolf Cub), one of many weird choices that will alienate new readers looking to jump on with this issue.
Designed to fail
All of this adds up to a book that seems designed to fail. One of the line’s best talents has been asked to reboot her quiet superhero book about Kitty, Emma and some newbies, and mold it into something it’s not designed to be. Add to this the severe downgrade in art quality, and I would be surprised if this book lasts 10 issues, or even if many readers will return for #2.
The blame for this lies directly at the feet of “Conductor of X” Tom Brevoort. Whatever the guardrails that have been set up for his creators, whatever lines he’s instructed them not to draw outside of, whatever inability to gather together the resources and the proper artistic talent, the lack of vision, organization, oversight and cohesion we see here falls on his utter failure as the head of the X-office. There’s no other way to explain the discordant mess we’ve seen and continue to see with this line. What could have been an auspicious beginning sending the X-Men into a new, exciting direction is dead on arrival. And it’s a damn shame because Ewing deserves better, and so do X-fans.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- After making such a big deal about how impenetrable this place was, they sure let an obviously evil Lockheed clone inside.
- How does something on the astral plane explode?
Buy X-Men United #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom. Follow him @adamreck.bsky.social.
