Salvador Larroca's cover to X-MEN #157.
© Marvel Comics

Mania Grade: B
Issue: 157
Authors: Chuck Austen, Salvador Larroca, Danny Miki
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $2.25

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X-MEN #157

Chuck Austen has gotten a lot of grief from UNCANNY X-MEN readers (and a lot of ribbing from me in my weekly column) about his handling of that title. But after reading NEW X-MEN...uh, I mean X-MEN #157, I have to wonder how many of the negative comments made about the issues he's written since taking over from Grant Morrison were more from habit than from actual considered criticism of the man's work on this title so far. Once you get into the routine of trouncing someone's past work, it's often difficult to start giving them any credit for present work that's either well or adequately done. As an introduction to a new chapter in the lives, this issue may not be perfectly done, but it's certainly more than adequate.

One specific criticism I've heard leveled at Austen's previous X-work is that it read more like soap opera than drama or adventure, and I suspect that this "new" book will come under the same sort of fire. It's not an unfair criticism to say that Austen spends less time on action than the average X-book might, but it's unfair to characterize the prioritization of character development over fisticuffs as "soap opera." If the "Re-Load" event is going to justify itself at all if the continued separation of the X-Men into multiple titles is ever going to be justifiable, in fact it will require the team in each title to have its own dynamic, and this first issue goes a long way towards setting up the dynamic of Alex's particular branch of the X-Men. I'd prefer to have a strongly character-driven issue to an issue filled with nothing but one long fight any day - especially if it leads to scenes like the one in which everyone is grousing at Scott to change teams, and in which Logan says what we've all been thinking ("I can't be on all the teams..."). If nothing else, X-MEN looks at first glance like the sort of book that will fulfill that occasional need. If it becomes habitual for the book to do nothing but stories in which the action is relegated to second-string status, however, then there could be a problem and some well-deserved negative criticism.

I somehow doubt any of that criticism will be leveled at Larroca and Miki, however. They give X-MEN a very distinctive look (although the look of the new school's interior, to be fair, is lifted directly from the movie versions), and there are only a few spots where the artistry doesn't quite hold up. The imagery is excellent for opening shots such as that in the Chinese village or for splash pages such as the aforementioned scene in Scott's office, but the impact of the final, gruesome image is somewhat reduced because it takes a few passes to get what's being communicated there. Despite that, most of what's here looks extremely good, and if these guys can draw the action as well as they draw the supposed "soap opera" and if Austen can write the action that well then this "new" incarnation of X-MEN may actually justify its "Re-Load" after all.