X-Men #17 by Jonathan Hickman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Can we just…not talk about Brett Booth? I mean…do we have to?
Look, whatever you think about Booth or his art, the simple fact is that he was a really, really strange choice to illustrate an X-Men book…that’s not supposed to be a nostalgia trip appealing to lovers of 90s comics…in the year 2021. This is just…odd. His artwork doesn’t fit in this run, and in a weird way it made me feel uncomfortable in a way that I doubt it will in X-Men: Legends. This is just not how we draw the X-Men anymore. It’s not bad. It’s technically proficient. It just doesn’t…fit.
The issue as a whole is an odd one, too. A strange bit of post-X Of Swords filler, that moves on some plot lines we last visited in the pages of Hickman’s New Mutants. Except it’s not New Mutants, so Scott, jean and Ororo take the forefront, while Sam and ‘Berto are relegated to comic relief. But while their antics were delightfully amusing in the pages of New Mutants, here they fall a little flat.
I assume that a lot of this is set up for future stories (possibly involving Storm adventuring in space), but the actual story here is unsatisfying. We don’t really know the kidnapped princess…we’ve not spent much time with the Shi’ar recently…so we don’t really know what’s at stake. Do the rebels really have a point? I mean…nobody voted for the Imperial Majestrix, did they?
Anyway, as I think I’ve made clear, this one just felt a little off.
I’m sure a lot of people will be raving about this being what X-Men comics are supposed to be like though. But, you know, it stopped being the nineties a while ago.
Random Ramblings Of A Ragamuffin 