This month, Trials of X Vol. 5 brings X-fans the newest installment in the ongoing chronological trade series that was spawned following Hickman’s HoX/PoX relaunch. As we other trades of this character, it assembles several issues across the X-line that were published around the same time period, but do not necessarily connect narratively. With some very strong single issues represented in this volume, it also includes a flimsier issue or two from this era of the X-Men.
Found in this volume is X-Men #3, Excalibur #23, X-Corp #2-4, and X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation #1, and it’s a curious assortment of issues. If you are buying this line of trades, you already know that it’s not going to be a coherent storytelling experience, but the curation on some of these volumes is curious, leaving me scratching my head at points.
First, X-Men #3 by Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz is an awesome single issue. Even if this was your introduction to the current incarnation of the title, this comic is so fun and beautiful, one can’t help but be enthralled by its execution. Duggan clearly pivoted to giving readers an X-Men team they would want to be a part of, even as they battle Dr. Stasis and his mutant-animal warriors. Even though it ends on a cliffhanger, the sheer joy his characters exhibit in being apex superheroes is a celebration of the X-Men as a team. Pepe Larraz does incredible work bringing these characters and villains to life, with every scene feeling worthy of a returning examination. It’s a wonderful issue capable of recruiting even jaded readers to the X-line.
Excalibur #23 is a fine issue in Tini Howard’s run on the title, with this story building directly out of the Hellfire Gala and Great Britain’s rejection of Krakoa. Lots of Otherworld intrigue and worldbuilding, with a notable inclusion of Doctor Doom to add to the drama. Rogue leaving this title to officially join the X-Men does feel like a major loss of one of its key anchor characters. Marcus To’s pencil work was the strongest aspect of this entire run, and he does excellent work in issue #23, making even scenes where characters sit around a game table in a library look energetic and stimulating.
Then we get to some notable misses with X-Corp and Onslaught Revelation. X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation #1 is basically the last issue of Si Spurrier’s Way of X run featuring Nightcrawler and Legion as they ostensibly explore the moral and religious aspects of Krakoan society. We learned in that series that Onslaught, the dark psychic version of Xavier and Magneto’s combined essence, is on Krakoa and is working to corrupt its mutant population. That conflict comes to a head with this issue, with Nightcrawler’s crew confronting the being while a Krakoan dance party beats along in the background. It falls a bit flat as both a battle issue and a concluding tale of a book that was sold as a philosophical examination of the society mutants were building.
By making this a single one-shot with Onslaught in the title, it felt like Marvel had lost faith in the title, inherently robbing the Way of X of its final issue to get readers of missed the series to buy this out of nostalgia for the 90s crossover. Bob Quinn does fine pencil work, but it lacks some of the dynamism displayed in other titles from this time. The entire issue seems rushed and thrown together to wrap up the story to prepare for the Legion of X relaunch a few weeks later.
The X-Corp issues are the weakest in this collection, and perhaps from this era of X-titles. It’s a shame, as I was excited to see Tini Howard explore the ways Krakoa would work within diplomatic and economic of the Marvel universe, but this book never found a suitable voice. It focuses on Monet and Angel attempting to thwart competing pharmaceutical companies, with a dose of superheroes thrown into the mix. If Monet and Warren are meant to be the best and brightest business minds of Krakoa, they sure don’t come across as such in these issues. With them bumbling through the endeavor, this run could have used some folks with corporate experience to punch up this script or drop that narrative pretense altogether. Valentine de Landro is a fine comic artist with a minimalist approach that unfortunately doesn’t elevate the story. It was a swing and a miss with X-Corp #3-4, but one hopes readers can appreciate what Marvel was going for with this short-lived series.
As always, you get a handful of the variant covers thrown in at the end, all of which getting full page reproductions. Wisely, the cover of the book incorporates one of Pepe Larraz’s dynamic battle scenes, and it looks beautiful combined with the run’s general graphic esthetic. This might not be the strongest collection of issues from last year’s X-line, but its strongest moments are what can make casual fans life-long comic readers.
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