TAZÍ

Details

• Writer: Dennis Hopeless
• Artist: Jamie McKelvie
• Publisher: Marvel Comics
• Year of publishing: 2012

Premise

A professor skilled in telepathy assembles a team of mutants to defend the normal people against the wrong-doing mutants.

So, I became an X-Men fan when I was around thirteen watching the original X-Men movies on Popcorn Time (Yeah, I think we all did, right?). X-Men: First Class was my favorite, closely followed by X2. My favorite character by far was Erik Lensherr, preferably Magneto (get it?) So now starting reading X-Men comics was the next logical step. Let’s see what I think of it, shall we?

The narrative

Dennis Hopeless tries to make a non-linear story and he does that successfully, starting midway the comic and then going way back to the beginning and that multiple times over again. He also uses something that’s called a bookending: which is a word or sentence (Is it better than calculus?) that appears in the beginning of the comic, but also ends with when the story comes full cycle. (This is better than calculus)

We follow Jean Grey (Or ‘Jeannie’ as she is here called) who goes to the school of mutants. There she’s got introduced to her fellow ‘X-Men’ and their tutor, Professor X. But. And this is a big ‘but’: her personality is very different than in most of her other comics. Whereas she most often is referred to as an INFJ (The Advocate) – in this comic however she resembles more of an ENTP (The Debater) or very sassy ENFJ (The Protagonist).

This is out of character and I have to give it downie points for that (as opposed to brownie points. Sorry…), although I must admit that her personality fits the comic perfectly, because she must stand her ground in a school full of teenage boys that mostly take an interest in her. Also, she doesn’t want to be a symbol, she just wants to survive being a teenager in telepathy.

She is well developed, as is Beast and Cyclops, although I found Iceman, but particularly Angel a bit underwhelming; he’s just the pretty boy were Iceman is the joker of the gang. Magneto was good in this and I liked the action-packed ending and also the way it ended.

Lastly, the comic’s plot is pretty good and tight and the pace is well – it flew by.

The art

The artist, Jamie Mckelvie is a master of the Ligne Claire (Clear line) tradition, but updated for the digital age. His lines are incredibly precise, but he is often criticised for drawing the same facial structures, but I must admit that wasn’t an issue for me, personally. Concluding, he treats comic book characters in general as fashion icons, but instead of the known X-Men costumes, nothing stood out for me actually. All in all a well-drawn comic, but not spectacular if you’d ask me. I did really like this last panel on the right underneath, were Professor X sits alone, drinking something while a shadow literarly and figuratively falls over him.

Final verdict

X-Men: Season One is a well-made comic, but it doesn’t stand out in the lot of them. It is very character driven and has nice emotional storytelling for teens and young adults, but stays fine instead of being more. Therefore I give this comic 3/5⭐️.

How would you rate this comic? Please let me know below:

Thanks for reading and see ya in the next one!

Yours,

Rain