X-Men: No More Humans

So it has occurred to me that the titles released in Marvel’s original graphic novel line have been released in such a way to cash in on whatever character or team is big in other media at the moment.  “Avengers:  Endless Wartime” came out in time for the start of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Amazing Spider-Man:  Family Business,” arrived enough in advance of “Amazing Spider-Man 2” to be on bookshelves for anyone who wanted a comic about the character after seeing the movie, and “Thanos:  The Infinity Revelation” will be out before “Guardians of the Galaxy” as well.  With “X-Men:  Days of Future Past” arriving in theaters this Friday, I’m certain that Marvel is hoping that this new graphic novel will be of interest to everyone who sees the potential megahit.  If nothing else, “No More Mutants” has the fact that it’s the best OGN in the company’s new line on its side to help with that.

That being said, I find the idea of the company trying to ride the coattails of the new movie with this graphic novel fairly amusing.  Mainly because I like to imagine their reactions to reading an “X-Men” comic that is set in the current comic continuity.  Not only do they have to take in the fact that Wolverine and Cyclops are running separate teams, that the original X-Men have time traveled to the present to avert what they see as an awful future, and that the main antagonist of this volume is Logan and Mystique’s son from the future.  Given how impenetrable “X-Men” continuity is on a good day, it’s likely that even lapsed fans will see all the changes here and simply be reminded of why they stopped reading in the first place.

For the rest of us who have been keeping up with the franchise, that won’t be a problem.  In fact, this volume feels like it was written for people who read the comics as they come out and don’t wait for the softcover editions of the trades like me.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been spoiled for a few things like the outcome of the “Battle of the Atom” crossover, I’d have been lost by some of the things presented in the story here.  However, writer Mike Carey has always taken a keen interest in “X-Men” continuity and how it relates to the characters in the present day.  Even if you’re not up on everything, he does a good job of presenting things in a way that works for the story.

As for the story, it’s spelled out pretty well by the title itself.  After a prologue with Raze — the aforementioned time-displaced son of Wolverine and Mystique — the X-Men wake up to find an airplane about to crash into the Jean Grey School.  Once the crisis is averted, they find that the plane was crashing because there was no one in it.  In fact, checking Cerebra and a quick trip to New York reveals no humans anywhere.  While tempers flare when Wolverine and company wind up confronting Cyclops’ team — who have also reached the same conclusion by checking the capitals of the world — it takes an intervention from Magneto to get everyone on the same page.  That page being:  Where have all the humans gone and what should be done about it?

It’s a good moral quandary for the cast to chew over and leads to many interesting perspectives on the situation given the various strains of morality present amongst the cast.  Even though most of them see this as a crisis that needs to be reversed, there’s a lot of dissent about how exactly to do that.  Especially from Beast, who tries as he has done for the past several years to attempt to hold the moral high ground in the face of his comrades who he considers to be compromising themselves one moral at a time.  We also get some clever lines out of it, such as when Magneto promises to put on a “sadder face” when discussing what has happened to all the humans.  Really, the best part of the book is seeing the interactions between the characters as Carey has clearly done his homework in terms of keeping up with the current continuity as well as the cast.  Not only does a very large portion of this cast get a moment to shine in the course of the narrative, but they’re all acting within their established characterizations.  Though Carey spent the bulk of his run off in the margins of the “X-Men” franchise with “Legacy,” he started off by showing that he was more than capable of writing one of the main teams with “Supernovas” and “Blinded by the Light.”  He re-asserts that conclusion here and it makes me amenable to seeing him do it again in the future.

That’s also because the story’s flaws, while noticeable, aren’t all that bad overall.  If you like lots of superhero action, then you’ll likely be frustrated by the slow burn the story takes before the fighting between the X-Men and Raze’s Brotherhood starts as most of the volume’s first half involves a lot of talking heads.  Also, while Carey does have a good handle on the cast’s powers, pushing Triage into “Herbert West:  Re-Animator” territory (the character’s words, not mine much as I’d like to take credit for them) does stretch credibility a bit too far.  Even if the results are a good argument for never doing this again.  Then you’ve also got the means by which the disappearance of the humans is resolved, which involves the closest thing to a deus ex machina the “X-Men” franchise has.  It does bother me a little that they had to go this route, particularly in the wake of “Avengers vs. X-Men.”  Even so, I don’t see how the story could’ve been resolved without the use of this thing, and as the cast notes it leads to some things we haven’t seen from it before.  So that’s welcome.

It has been a while since Salvador Larroca has tackled the “X-Men,” but like Carey, he hasn’t lost a step in the time that he has been away.  Not only is he great at making all of the talking heads look interesting, his dynamic style really sells the drama of the story as well.  We also get plenty of striking visuals from his art, like the double-page spreads of an empty Times Square, and the face-off between the X-Men and Raze’s Brotherhood.  Even better is that colorist Justin Ponsor is a much better fit for Larroca’s style than Frank D’Armata, who filled the same role while the artist was on “Invincible Iron Man.”  Ponsor’s work is simple but vibrant and a welcome change from how D’Armata could make the colors look over-rendered in his work.

So if you’re a current fan of the X-Men and looking for another good read involving them, then this is going to be right up your alley.  This is a solid stand-alone story that thrives on addressing the current continuity and making it work with great art as well.  It’s also a denser read than the previous titles in the Marvel OGN line, and all these things make the $25 cover price a lot easier to take.  Even though the next “X-Men” movie isn’t scheduled to come out until 2016, “No More Humans” is good enough to make me want to see Carey and Larroca tackle these characters again before that happens.