The X-Files #11 Review

Mulder continues his quest to find evidence of the Syndicate’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair (for children who didn’t grow up in the 80s, Wikipedia is your friend here).

The X-Files #11 (IDW Publishing)

Observations

• 1980’s Cigarette Smoking Man is a douche, but his hair is totally on point.
• When you’re Fox Mulder, a cocaine-addled ghost hitching a ride in the backseat of your car is likely to be only the third weirdest event of any given week.
• Once again, quoting the late Rick James: “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.”
• 1980s CSM should really stop making comments about Mulder’s wife if he doesn’t want to get his face punched in.
• Holy crap. The X-Files office might actually do some real federal crime work here.
• 1999 Ronald Regan: Even in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, he still appears to be more on top of things than our current president (and a lot more likable).

The Verdict

Yeah, I still have no idea what was going on with that cocaine ghost storyline. The resolution makes sense, but the path we took to get there was incredibly uneven and manic…which actually works well in a meta kind of way.

The real meat of this issue is found in the flashbacks featuring Fox Mulder’s father and the Cigarette Smoking Man. There’s not a lot of new information given, but watching these two interact is revealing enough in its own way—and highly entertaining. Greg Scott does a fantastic job on the art chores (while also keeping alive the Matthew Dow Smith tradition of flashbacks looking better than the present scenes).

Joe Harris also has Mulder voice some of the questions/frustrations many X-Files fans have with how the franchise has dealt with the character’s past.

Add in some genuinely funny retro humor, and you’ve got yourself a solid X-Files issue. It certainly wasn’t spectacular, but it was also a heck of a lot better than anything we’ve read since the series’ most recent relaunch. Maybe digging back into the past is just what this book needed to start heading in the right direction again.