X #1 A Review Part 4 of 6 - The Week of May 8 in Review

Look a book from this week. Before I jump into the mini-review of the book I want to point out how many exciting new books and projects are just over flowing from Image, Dark Horse, Boom, Dynamite and even Avatar. It is a new golden age to me. I’m enjoying so many books that the Marvel and DC stuff seems to be more stagnant then it was even a few years ago. The corporate gods will never open the gates for true creativity in their characters until the last dollar has been squeezed from the souls of those characters. Sadly with merchandising, cartoons, movies and the rest that will not happen in a very long time. I’m sure I will dust before it occurs. On that happy note let’s talk about X.

                                      

No nude dancers appear inside - Sorry Lee

X #1 is a revival of Dark Horse’s nineties foray into super heroes. Instead of the excess of the nineties, Dark Horse seems to be dipping its toe slowly in the water in reviving Ghost, X and other characters. First off they do some work in Dark Horse Presents. Then they green light a mini-series and watch the sales to see if they are getting it right or not.  Therefore the Zero issue is a repacking of the Dark Horse Presents stuff and then we jump into issue #1. Duane Swierczynski seems to be the go to guy for the hard edge and shoot’em up type of characters. Paired with Eric Nguyen the series has the right type of feel for a vigilante who seems to be more prone to getting himself beat up and shot as much as he defeats the bad guys.

I don’t remember much about X from before so I have no clue how much of this is a true re-imagining of the character or how much is updating the same character. Regardless I’m enjoying this street level vigilante who targets people who deserve to die. He is brash enough to announce what he is going to do but mailing a photo to his target with an X through it. This issue is a direct follow up from issue #0 and if someone jumps on with issue #1 they may have been a little loss. The net impact of the story is the police outwit him. X escapes in bad shape and is looking for help from a free lance journalist to get away.

An action packed start and the difference is the characterization focuses on the cast around X and we get nothing on X himself.

Buy it.