When Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca’s X-Treme X-Men first dropped in the 2000s, it sat next to Grant Morrison’s groundbreaking work on New X-Men and Peter Milligan’s hyper-meta X-Statix book on the comic shelf. With Marvel putting out some seriously diverse X-books at the time, X-Treme X-Men felt like the title tailor made to fans who wanted their books to tonally remain in a previous era.
While the original X-Treme X-Men title felt overly convoluted, I always appreciated that X-fans were able to pick and choose the style of mutant title that fits their interests, and judging by the recent omnibus collecting the first half of that Claremont run, there are clearly many readers who have an affinity for this team. In this five-issue mini, Claremont and Larroca return to this title as if the ensuing decade never transpired, and while it has some solid character moments, it suffers from having far too many plot threads and an insistence on being a sequel to other Claremont X-books from the past.
Collecting X-Treme X-Men #1-5 from 2022/23, this book features Kitty Pryde, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue, Storm and Bishop as they confront their old enemy, Ogun. It has plenty of the hallmarks Claremont’s work is known for: loss of powers, exposition-heavy dialogue, and an understanding that our merry mutants can overcome any obstacle if they work together. The first X-Treme X-Men series was a soft-sequel to Claremont’s seminal God Loves, Man Kills, but this title also tries to loop in the decades-old Kitty Pryde and Wolverine storyline, and the first issue of the series is basically a CliffsNotes of those previous arcs. It’s a bit much and seeing that most readers of this book are nominally familiar with those arcs, it seems a heavy-handed narrative approach to setting up this tale. As the story develops, the wounded X-Men confront the anti-mutant Purity group, beating them with an overwrought speech, while also battling Galérer. The title ends with the team celebrating their success over a beer, and leaving the door open for future adventures.
Much like the previous incarnation of the book, this X-Treme X-Men story seems to exist in a world divorced from the main themes in other titles. While most of the other X-books are building on the Krakoan theme established by Hickman in House of X, this title jettisons all of that for the melodramatic character scripting Claremont is known for. While not his worst writing by any means, this book’s pacing is unlikely to appeal to anyone beyond the Claremont faithful, with far too many dueling plots and characters crammed into its pages.
Salvador Larroca’s art has improved since the initial X-Treme X-Men run, with some very strong action scenes throughout the title. Unfortunately, his characters often look like action figures or copies of models found in magazines, and simply don’t have the dynamism one would expect from a comic book.
If you’re an X-Men fan uninterested in the Krakoan era, this book might be up your alley. It has more than a fair share of the things Chris Claremont’s X-Men are known for, and builds on some of his most famous works from the past. Regrettably, that’s likely the only type of person who will enjoy this miniseries. One hope that any subsequent X-Treme X-Men runs find new territory for Claremont to explore, and not just retreads into his favorite tropes.
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