Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

X-Men: Messiah Complex #1
Marvel Comics
Brubaker and Silvestri

This story official starts the big X-Men crossover of the century. The issue can only disappoint, right? It will just rehash a bunch of stuff we already knew and it will bore everyone to tears. I can skip this issue, right? No.

The X-Men team of Cyclops, Emma, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Angel fly to Alaska to look for the first new mutant birth in forever. One problem - the town is in flames. Suddenly it becomes more of a rescue operation.

We flash back to the mansion when Xavier and Beast are in the Cerebra and discover this new mutant birth. Xavier calls in the troops to find this mutant.

Back in the present, the X-Men begin to piece together what happened to the Alaska town and they learn that both the Marauders and the Purifiers arrived at this town with the same goal in mind. The X-Men missed the battled, but still got to see the carnage.

We are left with the X-Men having lost without even fighting a fight and the emergence of Predator X hot on the trail of the new mutant.

This issue delivers a lot of story and an awful lot of tough visuals. We see in this issue, not only dead children, but children still burning. Nothing like a wow-factor to kick off the crossover. But we also see the interactions of the X-Men team called in - both light moments and tense ones. It really re-establishes these relationships and creates a good baseline for this story arc.

This issue is good because we see many of the main players on each side of the war involved to some extent. Gambit fans don’t you worry, he is flipping his five of diamonds around all over the place. So we get story as well as a bit of a roll-call for the overall story.

The art work is a mixed bag for me. The Wolverine, Xavier and Emma are not among my favorite depictions, but Gambit, Beast and Nightcrawler all look outstanding. It's a mixture I can certainly live with. The thing about this particular issue I liked with the art is the use of the fire in the background. It really makes for excellent scenery.

I also enjoyed the extra pages in the back to introduce some of the main players and give some more artwork. Was it worth the extra buck? Not for me, but I understand the deal with these things so I was okay with it.

In all, this is the point for all the old X fans to come back into the fold. I am one of them and I was giddy with this issue. I hope the grizzled X veterans enjoyed this issue as much as I did. I suspect a newbie would also like it. This crossover has huge hype and step one was one in the right direction from my perspective.

5 out of 5 geek goggles.