Ahhh yes, the long awaited Dazzler one shot. Originally scheduled for November of 2017, it has finally arrived, seven months late. This one shot written by Magdelene Visaggio, with art by Laura Braga, centers around Allison’s new band that has been taking off in the Brooklyn punk scene. But it’s not all sparkles and tunes, as violent mutant supremacists have been showing up at her shows to bully and harass inhuman attendees.
I get the themes here of intercommunity conflict doing more harm than good. In this day and age, we really do need solidarity between minorities of different kinds and to avoid picking each other apart for stupid things. That being said, did we really have to dreg up the Inhumans/X-Men conflict of years gone by? Even if Inhumans vs. X-Men hadn’t been hot garbage, it would still seem weird to bring up this animosity literally a year and a half (that’s 10 years in comic time) after the fact.
The other half of the issue is about Allison figuring out that it’s okay not to be a superhero, and that you can be a hero in other ways. Of course this seems kind of empty, since she’s going to be joining the X-Men come Astonishing X-Men #13. I don’t necessarily think this is Visaggio’s fault as she was doing the best with what she had. I’m not sure if this was written initially in 2017 or in the last few months, but it feels like it might have be written earlier than usual, since Dazzler being back on the X-men wasn’t announced until a couple months ago. In the end, there were just a lot of things in this issue writing-wise that seemed a bit out of whack. Again I don’t think this is indicative of Visaggio’s writing. Maybe it just shows that she’s not used to working for the big two and how the flow of this kind of writing works.
I’ve never really liked Braga’s art, but it worked really well for this issue. It captures the youthful vibrance of Dazzler with a mature edge. The coloring when Allison was using her powers was really gorgeous, and the background shots where there are lots of people are extremely well-rendered. I don’t really have a whole lot to say other than that, but overall, I really liked the art and I thought it fit the tone of the comic extremely well.
Dazzler: X-Song #1 isn’t necessarily bad. I enjoyed it overall and especially enjoyed the tone and feel of the comic. It’s just that a lot of it didn’t really add up or feel organic. The art fit the story very well, and the message of avoiding intercommunity/intersectional infighting was an important one, even if I think it was weird to use Dazzler and the Inhuman vs. X-Men conflict to fit this.
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