One of my earliest comic book memories was the X-Men event “Fatal Attractions”. Despite being way too young to read it (the image of Wolverine’s bone claws reveal is forever a traumatic event for me), it was one of the first times I ever hunted down individual titles to get the whole story. After that, I went backwards for “X-Tinction Agenda”, “X-Cutioner’s Song”, and my forever favorite, “Inferno”. Of course, these multi-title crossovers and line-wide events are often cited as everything wrong with comics, but at their best they are bombastic. X-Manhunt, the first line-wide event in the “From The Ashes” era of Marvel’s mutants, is no exception.
Following the events of the “Fall of Krakoa”, Professor Charlies Xavier has been kept in the maximum security Graymalkin Facility. Upon receiving a psychic distress call across space from his daughter Xandra, Charles makes it his mission to escape and get to his daughter. This finds him crossing paths with the casts of X-Mens Uncanny and adjective-less, the young mutants of NYX, Storm, X-Force, Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost’s Exceptional X-Men, and X-Factor (hey that’s all of the X-books that were published at the time, interesting!). As he makes his way through the the individual issues of these mutants, some try to stop him, some try to assist him, and others sit back and reflect on the damage recent and ancient that he has caused in the name of the mutant race.
One of the great things about X-Manhunt is that it truly feels like one of the X-Men events of old. In fact, the one it reminds me the most of is that already mentioned “Fatal Attractions”. In that event, the individual titles had a loose association to the main story of Magneto’s return, allowing the individual creative teams to still tell their stories while touching on the big editorial mandated event. X-Manhunt is more direct than “Fatal Attractions” was, but it’s a good way to check in on the different “From The Ashes” era titles to see what, if any, storylines you might want to check out. The big exception to this, however, is the issue of Exceptional X-Men that is included in this collection. Where the other titles had Xavier show up and either fight the titular characters or recruit them to assist him, in Exceptional Xavier not only never shows up, but is only mentioned in one big splash page reveal from Bobby Drake. It’s such a blatant editorial cash grab to try to get you to buy more comics to understand one line of dialogue that I’m legitimately surprised it was still included in this trade.
Marvel
That being said, I commend the writers of these individual series for working so well together to craft something that feels as organic as it does. Gail Simone, Jed MacKay, Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Murewa Ayodele, Mark Russell, Eve L. Ewing, and Geoffrey Thorne all work well at balancing the forward momentum of the event while not completely pressing pause on what is happening in their individual books. The writers also keep the distinct themes of their titles intact too, and it works surprisingly well for a book that is collecting so many different writing styles. Russell’s entry with X-Factor reads like one of his issues, complete with some pretty hilarious moments from the team as they fight it out with Cyclops’ X-Men. Ayodele’s entry with Storm reads like the pseudo-cosmic epic that the series has excelled in. Even the already mentioned Exceptional, while inessential to the overall story, has some fantastic character writing from Ewing, honing in on what drives and motivates Emma Frost. In a time where a lot of line-wide events force the individual titles into a more homogenous role, it was nice to see the different writers get to take the event and form it into what they are writing for a change.
That also goes for the artists in each story, as they’re able to hone in on their individual strengths with the parts of the story they get. You wouldn’t want someone like Netho Diaz handling an issue where the X-Men stand around talking out their differences, and MacKay wisely doesn’t do that, with their issue of X-Men being one of the action high points of the story. The flip side is Luciano Vecchio’s issue of Storm, which contains the illustrative grandeur and beauty that the character, and the chapter of X-Manhunt, requires. Bob Quinn’s art in the X-Factor chapter enhances Mark Russell’s script, adding an additional punch to the humor with how the characters’ body language goes along with the story. This many varied art styles in one collection shouldn’t work, but it somehow creates a consistency in its inconsistency, and makes the story feel bigger as a result.
While X-Manhunt is a surprisingly successful crossover, there’s not a lot here narratively that a quick recap in the currently running Imperial mini-event can’t cover. Additionally, the brief looks into the ongoing stories of the individual titles probably aren’t enough to convince you pick them up after finishing the collection (and if you did, most of them are either cancelled or on hiatus due to the latest X-crossover “Age of Revelation”). With the frequency that Marvel events happen, it feels like X-Manhunt has already been forgotten, and the story doesn’t really get going until the final few chapters. There’s a bit of retconning Xavier’s actions at the end of “Fall of Krakoa” that I’m surprised didn’t get more traction when the story came out, but overall this is a fun, if slight, crossover that allowed me to check in with the other teams of Mutants that I hadn’t been reading outside of Uncanny and X-Men.
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