Giant-Size X-Men #1: New Team, New Problems

And today, we finally reach the end of the Dark Times with the restart of the X-Men, and with this restart we get an all new, more world-wide team (seriously, of the original team + Xavier, 4 are from New York state, Cyclops is from Alaska, and Beast is from Illinois).

The comic starts with Xavier recruiting the new team. He travels to Germany to stop a mob from killing Kurt Wagner, our furry blue acrobat/teleporter. He travels to Canada to recruit Wolverine out of the military. He travels to Nashville, Tennessee to recruit Banshee (who apparently is a fan of country music). He travels to Kenya to recruit Ororo Monroe, who is currently acting as a goddess to people by bringing rain and such. He travels to Japan to recruit Sunfire. He travels to Siberia to recruit the farmer who turns into a metal man Piotr Rasputin (referred to as Peter at this point in the comic). And finally he heads out to Arizona to recruit John Proudstar, a super fast, super strong, super tough Apache, who he basically goads into joining.

He brings them all to the school, gives them all costumes made of unstable molecules (something he had learned from Reed Richards). He then gives all the ones who didn't have codenames codenames. Storm for Ororo, Colossus for Piotr, Thunderbird for John, and Nightcrawler's name remains his stage name from when he was in the circus. You know, I always felt like Xavier was too quick just to assign a codename instead of letting them come up with something themselves. Like, really, just going "Hey, you're Native American, let me think of the first Native American mythological creature I can, there, you are Thunderbird" is uh. A choice.

Anyway, we learn that the original X-Men had travelled to the island of Krakoa because of a large spike on Cerebro, and then... something happened. Cyclops doesn't know what but when he awoke he was in the X-Jet with it automatically flying home, and the rest of the X-Men were gone. Also his eyes weren't blasting. When he arrives back, his powers come back, but stronger than ever.

Xavier has recruited this new team to figure out what happened to his old team. So he sends them out pretty much untrained. That's fun.

Cyclops leads the team onto the island, and let's just say... team is putting it loosely. Sunfire is still an arrogant twat. Thunderbird is bristly and can't seem to get along with anyone. Wolverine is just generally grumby and doesn't like authority much. Colossus is kind of naive, but has a temper about certain things (usually protecting people). Nightcrawler is the most positive and happy, but also seems to do everything with a little bit of extra pizzazz which annoys Scott because he isn't efficient. Storm is the only one who doesn't seem to be actively annoying anyone else.

They split up, face some separate threats, and come together at the weird temple in the center. Inside they find the original team, all connected to something that is feeding on them. They break them free, but then we learn: it was all a trap! Cyclops was originally caught as well, but he had been sent to bring back more mutants.

The entire island is alive, and it has been feeding on their mutant energies. They fight hard, and with a combination of powers using a plan that Xavier feeds them from afar, they manage to launch the entire island into space.

They come home and then ask: Well what do we do with this many X-Men?

X-tra Notes: I really love the dynamic of the new team. All of them have their issues, and there is internal conflict but it is a different kind of thing. Also, not all of them just blindly follow Xavier. They aren't teens who all trained together and have similar viewpoints with a few minor differences. They are all adults who have had life experiences long before they all met. This was written by Len Wein rather than Claremont, but we can already see the bones that Claremont will build on top of.