X-Men Deadly Genesis for $13.24
Deadly Genesis was created as a retcon of Giant Size X-Men 1, written by Marvel fan favourite Ed Brubaker, designed to create a new Summer brothers and show him as one of the most powerful mutants in existance. From that sentence alone, you could tell why most comic readers would be wary. Retcon? New Summers brothers?? SUPER POWERFUL?!? … but…. Ed Brubaker. Does he make it work? Keep on reading to find out.
An interesting aspect to this story, one that’s been touched upon in other comics as well, is showing Xavier’s dark side. This particular arc features a lot of that and makes Xavier look like a damn asshole who manipulates a lot of people and causes some unfortunate deaths. I can understand making Xavier a little more dark, though in the old comics he was already kind of an irritable ass to begin with, but some of the recent stuff is going a bit far.
Vulcan, the “new” Summers brother, is an awful character. He was awful in the first arc I read with him (the recent cosmic arc) and his origin isn’t much better. When the X-Men do get a chance to fight him, some of the most talented and powerful mutants around can’t manage to beat him. Toss in that a classic characters gets killed in one of the fights from this story, ehhhh.
The best part was the sections at the end of each comic. They come up with cool origins for the new mutants involved in this story. They’re quite interesting and aside from Vulcan, pretty fun characters.
Vulcan really seems unnecessary to me, which is one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy this arc as much as I could have. As far as retcons go, the overall idea wasn’t bad. You’ve also got to consider the event they’re retconning, Giant Size X-men with Krakoa, was pretty awesome back in the day. Seeing it from a new angle, even if it is an angle that has some issues, is still enjoyable.
3/5. Some cool parts and a decent enough read, but not one I’d go out of my way for.
