Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

X-Men Original Sin #1
Marvel Comics
Way, Carey, Deodato & Eaton

The opening of the crossover between X-Men Legacy and Wolverine Origins has an interesting set up. The comic is split between both title’s creative teams into two chapters. The story is seamless in its hand off between teams. The comic deals with reestablishing Wolverine and Xavier’s relationship and bringing Wolverine’s son, Daken, into the picture for those who might not know him. It’s a good story but it doesn’t feel terribly essential for this crossover.

The story starts with Wolverine dropping Daken off at the house of one of his friends. Then he heads to see the X-Men. He wants Emma to mind wipe his son’s conditioning. What he finds is that Xavier’s scent is all over Cyclops. Wolverine goes beserk and storms off.

Eventually he finds Xavier hanging around and he then propositions Xavier to help with Daken. Xavier is less than thrilled to hear that someone wants to use him and his mind powers to un-brainwash someone and he ultimately has a confrontation with Wolverine. Meanwhile, Daken finds himself making friends with the wrong kind of people if you are an X-Men.

The issue doesn’t try to do too much. In fact, the few things it wants to accomplish are done quite easily, like setting up who Daken is and what Wolverine wants to get done. But when it tries to branch off it gets into trouble. For example, Wolverine just wants someone to get into his kid’s head, so he needs someone with psychic powers. This comic should have just had him find Xavier. Instead it tries to explain how Wolverine didn’t know Xavier wasn’t dead. The problem here is that he is so full of rage when he finds out Xavier’s alive he forgets to care when he meets Xavier to find out what exactly happened to this whole time he’s been missing. It’s trying to tie too many X-Men loose ends in and heaven knows there more to keep track of that can easily be counted.

The artwork has a consistent flow. There isn’t a ton of action to go on here so the comic captures some of the drama with the art, but the bulk is handled through the dialogue.

The comic provides an old reprint in the back to help mark the price up a buck and that’s pretty much the whole comic in a nutshell.

The story is okay, but it doesn’t seem to tell us anything more than a recap page could in the next issue. It’s not a bad story it just doesn’t seem to be mandatory to follow this story. I liked it but I was a little turned off by the cover price and the confusing side plot of Wolverine freaking out about Xavier being alive. IF you do read this you will at least get a clear understanding of Wolverine’s motives and Xavier’s tance on this subject. Generally a good story, but I hope the overall crossover has more to offer than this one shot did.

3 out of 5 geek goggles