As a longtime X-Men fan, I’ve come to realize that I like the team best when they are at their weirdest: Magneto leading the team? Absolutely. A guy named Maggot who has slugs for a digestive system? Bring it on. Wolverine without a nose and wearing a bandana mask? …Okay, maybe not that one. But one of my favorite eras of Uncanny X-Men is from the late ’80s, when the team was relocated to Australia and believed dead after a battle with The Adversary. While a lot of my love for that era of the team was because it was easy to get those comics as a kid (they were five years old around that point and good for the cheap boxes my parents would have me go through), the team of Dazzler, Longshot, Colossus, Rogue, (pre-Kwannon) Psylocke, Havok, Storm, and Wolverine has always had a special place in my heart as being some of my earliest memories of grabbing comics from a long box and pouring over the pages. Did I understand the intricacies of “Inferno” at age five? No, but it looked cool and scary and Mister Sinister had a rad cape, and that was enough for me.
So when the latest Marvel nostalgia miniseries X-Men: Outback was announced, I was pretty damn giddy over a return to this era of the X-Men, which despite getting some love in the X-Men: The Arcade Game roster, is often overlooked these days. While it could have been just a quick cash grab, X-Men Outback, from writer Steve Orlando and artist Stephen Segovia, is a fun day-glo adventure that balances a nostalgic past with modern day sensibilities, and also makes sure to find some heart in there as well.
The X-Men are dead. At least, that’s what it appears to be. Following their battle with The Adversary, the mutant Forge has transported the X-Men to Australia to go into hiding, taking the blame for their deaths. As the team investigates their new surroundings, they try to come to grips with everything that’s happened in their long battles so far. Wolverine and Rogue attempt to roll with the new situation, while Dazzler, not one for roughing it, feels an itch to get back to the real world and show everyone that they’re still alive. And Storm, recently returned to life and the X-Men, is weighing the desire of being team lead again after being away. But the comfort of anonymity is soon broken when Sabretooth arrives, looking to attack Wolverine for his annual birthday gift.
One of the things that took me by surprise with Outback was how well Steve Orlando balances the action and melodrama within this opening issue. Chris Claremont will always reign supreme for what he’s done with the merry mutants, but at times the older issues of Uncanny can read as extremely dense, packing in tons of information in a given page (not to mention recaps of power sets that can get a little tedious when you read a giant collection). Orlando keeps the spirit of classic Claremont stories alive by imbuing Outback with a pretty interesting through-line: the weight and trauma of battling for a world that “hates and fears you”, and what that can do when you finally have a chance to breathe. Orlando gives nearly all of our X-Men members a chance to unpack those thoughts and feelings here, but the one that moved me the most was seeing Colossus off in a corner on his own, drawing. It’s an extremely human element for one of the X-Men’s powerhouses, and Orlando’s narration for this moment is really beautiful.
Colossus isn’t the only member who gets a great moment. In fact, Orlando balances the various members of the X-Men pretty well in this debut issue. Obviously the big names Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, and Colossus have bigger moments, but Orlando make a point to highlight Longshot and Dazzler, the latter of which has a pretty fun back and forth between Rogue about their current living situation. Really the only members of the team that aren’t give as much to do in this issue are Havok and Madelyne Pryor, but looking ahead at future Marvel solicits, it’s clear that Orlando has plans for them already.
Marvel
These nostalgia miniseries always have take an interesting approach when it comes to the artists they choose: do you go with someone more modern, or try to embrace the era you’re returning to? With Stephen Segovia, X-Men: Outback has an artist that is almost the perfect melding of both flavors. There are panels here, like the one introducing Storm, that look like Segovia studied the Uncanny X-Men artists of that era and did his own recreations, while later moments in the book, like Sabretooth’s attack on the team, feel completely modern and far more frenetic than even the best moments of the X-books of that era. Segovia really could not have been a better choice for this type of book, as his style and sense of artistic pacing really works well for the action and quieter character beats that Orlando puts in the script. While some more details for the backgrounds would have been nice, at the same time, the X-Men are in the Australian outback, a place not exactly known for backgrounds beyond deserts and mountains.
X-Men: Outback #1 serves as a really solid start to yet another Marvel nostalgia mini. While there’s a definite sense of “we have to put things back to how they were” at play already by issue’s end, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of familiarity with an era of the team that I personally really love, and the fact that it’s written with this much of a character focus already was a really pleasant surprise. X-Men: Outback may not be a series with the under 30 crowd in mind, but for us old timers it’s a welcome blast from the past.
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