X-Men: Deadly Genesis (Comic Review)

As with the last book review this is posted in full on http://thefoundingfields.com/ and this is simply a preview. If you want to see it in full then please follow the link through to there.

If you’ve been reading these reviews before you’ll know that my views on the modern Marvel universe are dim to say the least. With its pointlessly nihilistic attitude to events, determination to ignore all previous logic and continuity, and any good series often being crushed beneath the utter stupidity of their next big event; it’s enough to make the bottom-of-the-barrel worst of the New 52 look stellar by comparison. While there are ultimately many factors which contributed to this state, there are two which continue to enforce it to this day: Letting Brian Bendis treat the universe as his personal playground, ignoring anything which isn’t in his comics, and the themes of the Ultimate universe bleeding over into the mainstream universe. X-Men Deadly Genesis is arguably the most infamous example of the latter, and easily one of the most damaging.

First let this be clear: This isn’t a jab at the Marvel Ultimate imprint. It has interesting stories, and a reason to keep being printed even after the disaster of Ultimatum. However, that place isn’t Marvel 616 and the Ultimate universe was specifically created to try things which wouldn’t be acceptable to try there. Despite this fact, authors now keep inserting themes and even characterisations from the Ultimates into their original counterparts.

Following directly on from the trainwreck which was House of M, the X-Men are still reeling from most of their species being wiped from existence. As the energy of mutantkind’s powers dissapates into orbit, something is awoken and returns to earth. Something old, something very powerful, and something very angry. Even as the team begins to try and deal with this, the oldest among their number begin to realise something is amiss. An old secret lies within their past, a dark one which lies back to the very origin of many members and the heart of their founder…