House of X #1 is the highly anticipated X-Men Comic from Jonathan Hickman, one of the greatest writers in modern comics. It's well worth the read, and I can only hope that Powers of X will be too when it drops next week. In conclusion: pick this book up, regardless of how much you care about the X-Men. Finally, the Fantastic Four makes a brief appearance, and Hickman writes them as perfectly as ever. Cyclops and Professor X, characters I'm not usually fond of, have some great moments, too, which made me understand why they're still looked up to by so many people. Magneto gets a couple of lines here which deserve to go down as some of his most iconic- what Hickman does with him here is a lot like what Matt Fraction did with Emma Frost (specifically, the "How I Survived Apocalyptic Fire" speech), taking an already fantastic character and showing why they're so great in a couple of sentences. There's also some pretty great character work on display here. If anything, it shows that the tone Hickman's setting was done TOO WELL, which is certainly not a bad problem to have. I've seen some people complaining that this is simply yet another story about mutant isolationism, but I vehemently disagree it's about the promise of a true safe place for mutants, and those calling it isolationism are simply having the same reaction as this story's human characters. Even then, though, Hickman still dresses the story in some deliberately familiar trappings. The mutants feel more larger-than-life than any other time I can recall in comics, and it feels like something they've finally EARNED after 80 years of fighting for it. When it comes to the massive paradigm shift for mutantkind introduced here (which I won't elaborate on, pick up the book yourself), the creative team manages to walk the tonal tightrope between the joyous wonder shared by the mutants and the paranoia of humankind, the natural fear of being replaced as the dominant spe cies. Hickman seamlessly blends traditional superhero storytelling with a sci-fi political thriller, with plenty of help from Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia's gorgeous art, Clayton Cowles' subtle lettering, and some truly excellent graphic design from Tom Muller. I hopped on board the Hickman train midway through his Avengers run and I haven't gotten off since, so I'm very pleased to say HoX #1 lives up to the hype and then some.
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