Age Of X-Man: X-Tremists #1 // Review
The Age of X-Man event continues with the latest excursion into misplaced utopia: X-Tremists. Written by Leah Williams, the inaugural story of a team of mutants protecting society from secret threats is brought to the page by artist Georges Jeanty with ink by Roberto Poggi and color by Jim Charalampidis. The story of those with powers policing the world bursts onto the page without much innovation here, but its presence DOES serve to enrich the world of The Age of X-Man event with the perspective of those who serve those who are in power as they are forced to interact with the disenfranchised.
A group of mutant peacekeepers from the government’s Department X is sent out to deal with a couple of “retrograde” mutants who have committed the crime of falling in love...and as it turns out...actually conceiving a child through sexual intercourse. So it’s a messy situation made all the more complicated by the fact that the mutants in question are vicious lycanthropic were-rats. Blob, Psylocke, Iceman, Northstar, Jubilee, and Moneta just might leave the encounter a bit more than shaken.
Leah Williams does a respectable job of trying to make superhuman policing in a shiny dystopia feel interesting and unique. The issue trudges through the long, agonizing process of delivering the specific team dynamics of THIS parallel universe’s incarnations of a host of familiar Marvel mutants. Williams keeps it fun as bits of the world of The Age of X-Man become more apparent while characters interact in a team-based mobile workplace. Williams’ approach might not be all that novel, but the plight of a couple of human rodents who have fallen in love gives the story just enough novelty to give the opening chapter of X-Tremists something memorable to carry it into its second issue.
Jeanty and Poggi carve the action in a jagged sketchiness that becomes a bit blocky in the presence of heavy shadows. The gold and black outfits of the Department X field team look classy enough, but they all kind of blur into each other visually...a fact that doesn’t hurt the overall murkiness of the dystopian feel going on the title. As with the scripting, the art really comes alive when the field team encounters the mutant human rat couple and things get aggressive. There are a lot of ways to make rodent-human hybrids look too human or too animalistic. Jeanty and Poggi give very naturalistic animalism to the unlucky couple that imbues the story with stylish aggression. Far from naturalistic, the coloring still manages to filter its way through the art with a shorthand that fits the artwork well. The deep blues of Iceman’s powers contrast well against the purples of Psylocke’s psychic knife. Sound effects lash out in a sickly yellowy-tan and everyone shouts in purple. It sounds strange, but it works. The artwork wouldn’t have quite the same impact without Charalampidis’ clever chromatic choices.
The cheesiness of a dystopia that outlaws love is muted here in a very dramatic story that trudges through the drudgery of establishing another collection of familiar heroes in another parallel universe. Given the animalistic emotional nature of the people our “heroes” are going out to deal with, the issue is not without its impact as the opening round of the Age of X-Man titles begins to draw to a close.
