So, I'm under the stigma of being an X-Men fan. The somewhat corny melodrama, the strange powers and appearances, the diverse and well developed stable of characters, no matter how many times I've tried to leave comics behind me the X-books are always the chain that drags me kicking and screaming back into the dark recesses of comic fandom. Today I want to talk about X-Men Prelude to Schism, but for those of you who aren't particularly knowledgeable about the X-Men, let me give you a quick break down of the situation today.
X-Men over the last several years have been de-emphasized by Marvel as they try to develop and promote the franchises that haven't done quite as stellarly as they may have wished in the first part of the last decade, and as such have earned a bad rep from some comics fans. The last X-Men project to garner a lot of praise was Whedon's Astonishing X-men, and that was more than half a decade ago. Moreover it is despite having a classic roster of incredibly iconic X-Men (or more likely because of it) I find it to be one of the least X-Men like comics ever published in the line.
The last several years have been pretty good as the franchise has started to find its feet again and get a solid direction after its core purpose was shattered by the rather ill thought out House of M. We got the Hope saga, with its odd theme of faith, and while that still feels like a strange and slightly inappropriate place to take the X-titles its generally worked out well allowing for a lot of characters and concepts to shine and bringing back the more tumultuous nature of classic X-men.
Now though we are coming upon X-Men: Schism, and more to the point of this article Prelude to Schism. The X-men as an organization have become rather monolithic under the auspices of Matt Fraction and Nick Lowe. Nearly a hundred mutants live on Utopia the small island "nation" which the X-Men call their home, Thats half the mutants left on the planet, and they are all basically on one team. This has become somewhat badly managed, and Schism, a fight between Cyclops and Wolverine which will end with the X-Men's membership splitting down the middle and taking on two different philosophies of protecting mutant kind, is hopefully the solution. Not only should it allow the books to become more distinctive (most of the current x titles feature the same 9-12 mutants in them despite having a roster of at least 50 X-men) but it is supposed to drag the X-Men back into the spotlight of the Marvel Universe as a whole.
This brings me to Prelude to Schism, a book that fails to in anyway live up to its name while also being utter tripe.
Now in saying it doesn't live up to its name, one might say I'm being unfair. This comic takes place sometime in the middle of the upcoming Schism storyline, a storyline which does not begin for another two months, but it does at least take place before the actual fight between Cyclops and Wolverine takes place. Despite this its still fairly problematic.
Prelude drops us in the middle of an in progress story. It doesn't tell us whats happening, something is coming to attack the X-men. We don't know who or what, but we know that the X-Men must choose to stand their ground and maybe die, or run away and hide. Throughout the four issues of the book we see four characters with leadership roles among the X-Men, and get a view of where they are coming from as a person and some of their personal philosophies on where mutant kind should be headed. That's the theory anyway. Even if that were the case (which its not), it wouldn't serve as a prelude to this story. Prelude tells us nothing about Schism, it doesn't in anyway distinguish why this threat is any worse than the Sentinel invasion of the recent Second Coming, and in that story the X-Men didn't even have the option of running away. The examining of these characters philosophies doesn't really set us up for any logical break either. These four characters, Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops and Logan are all in lockstep with each other, in no way does this book give you any idea of why, come the end of schism, the X-Men will Never Be The Same™.
I think the point of this comic probably isn't to actually act as a prelude to Schism in anyway, but rather to inform a lot of people who have gotten into comics in the modern Avengers franchise craze as to who some of these characters are, and what there role is today. Sadly, even in this the book is at least partially a failure.
The first issue of the book is told from Charles Xavier's perspective, and the problem here is two fold. Problem one is that the entire issue reads like the worlds longest birthday card to Cyclops. Going over how proud he is about how Cyclops has always been such a good little leader, and has united mutant kind, and second, this guy doesn't really act like Charles Xavier. Charles Xavier is a man with a huge ego and a control freak, he has a tendency to put himself over Scott in any situation possible. So why do we get this Professor X who lovingly wholeheartedly endorses Scott in every way? It's because of Xavier in the cartoons, and Xavier in most of the movies. Xavier is just supposed to be a kindly bald guy with a dream, not a nuanced character with a lot of negative qualities laying just under his saintly persona.
The next three issues are a bit different. They are closer to origin stories, with each of the characters thinking about events of their past and their various philosophies. This is actually very interesting. The moments the characters choose to think of are all pretty important moments in their collective histories, but they arent really defining moments in their history of leadership. The whole thing is slanted in such a way as to give you a very narrow, and extremely superficial look at these characters. Instead of looking at each character holistically, and seeing how the sum of their differing experiences might affect their philosophies, Jenkins (and I assume Marvel editorial) instead tries to simplify these characters to their most easily distinguishable origins and traits. This is most apparent if you look at the Xavier issue, and how it relates very little to Xavier's actual history in any way. This is because Xavier in the adventures of his youth is barely recognizable as the guy in the chair in the cartoons. He gets in fights, he kills people, he is a lot more morally ambiguous than Marvel usually likes to portray him in outside media (a side note: to its credit the recent X-Men First Class film gives us a better and more accurate Charles Xavier than 90 percent of Marvel's writers do).
You may ask why I'm going on about all this. Well, two reasons, first is that anyone who is actually reading the Xmen titles and bought Prelude to Schism was basically just tricked into wasting their money. The book gives no story, no information on Schism, and only the absolutely most superficial of looks into the characters they are highlighting. You could get a more well rounded understanding of the characters from going on wikipedia. Secondly, and more importantly in the long run, what does it say about Marvel that they are trying to boil down these characters to the most simple versions of themselves. Perhaps its just an easier way to make new readers to the Xmen feel comfortable, and I can understand that, but I have to wonder what happens when one of these new readers picks up an issue of X-Men Legacy and finds an Xavier wholly unlike the one he's used to. Magneto and Cylops are both characters who are far far more complex these issues would like you to believe.
I dont think Marvel will actually try to simplify these characters, I dont think they really want to, and I dont think it would actually work, but I have to look askance at Marvel for creating a lead in series that accomplishes so very little. It probably has helped a little to get some new readers over to the X Books, and I have to give it a little credit for that, but I still worry that the poor or over simplified versions of the characters rendered in Schism will leave some readers adrift come the comics that follow Schism proper.
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