Buy Pile Report: Messiah CompleX

Everyone, let's have a round of applause for Ed Brubaker and Marc Silvestri.

(pauses for applause)

Sure, the first issue of an event is always the easiest, but Messiah CompleX #1 succeeded in every way.

And, it did it in such a way that makes me optimistic for the rest of the crossover. While previous dynamite first issues really try to hit you over the head with larger-than-life moments (see Captain America's Civil War fighter jet ride, for example), this first issue simply builds to momentum.

That's not to say there was no excitement here, either. Immediately we're dumped into a warzone, the result of a battle between the Marauders and the Purifiers just an hour ago. We watch the X-Men scramble to first diagnose the situation and then save the lives that can be spared, all the while a good tone for how the X-Men work as a team is established.

And really, the X-Men team working their way around this warzone has the closest feel to the X-men teams of the '90s that we've seen in a while, because there is that tone of teamwork. Cyclops is calling the shots, and all the other mutants are being utilized as a team, not simply working as lots of individuals by themselves but calling themselves a team. This re-established sense of teamwork is my greatest wish for the X-Men books of the future.

The only downside (which won't even be a downside when re-reading this as a complete event) is that this issue simply sets the table for the storyline with details we already knew thanks to all the promotion for this event. The X-Men are chasing after the first mutant birth since M-Day, which both the Marauders and Purifiers also want, and one of those two now have the kid.

Now let's all just hope that this story lives up to its potential. And let's all hope that Bachalo's and Ramos' art doesn't kill the story after Silvestri did such a magnificent job with this opener.

Oh, but there was one little issue with Silvestri's art... and kids, close your ears... there is one panel in which Emma and Scott are alone on the Blackbird and Emma is kind of sticking her butt out toward Scott as she asks him "And what about us, Scott, No orders for me?" ... does that seem wrong to anyone other than me? Do I just have the imagination of an eighth-grader?