Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size

Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size, despite its unweildy title, is a fresh start for a classic era of X-Men adventure. It takes the First Class brand of X-Men action, with its done-in-one (or two at the most) plots, goofy comic-strip backups, and smiling mutants, and applies it to the team of the '70s. And it took three writers (Scott Gray, Roger Langridge, Jeff Parker) and five artists (Dennis Calero, Sean Galloway, Craig Rousseau, Cameron Stewart, David Williams) to do it.

Cyclops is the last of the original X-Men at Xavier's school (though Jean Grey promises to reappear as Phoenix in the next issue), and Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, and Banshee have just joined the team. It's a little unclear whether Sunfire and Thunderbird are still running around the mansion as well, off-panel, or if this issue is set after they've gone, but such continuity-cop details aren't really important to the story.

And there's a great story here. Or six of them, depending on your point of view.

A framing tale shows Cyclops struggling a bit with the fact that the New Team isn't the same as the Old Team. They didn't come to Charles Xavier as Gifted Youngsters, and they don't behave like students. When they're brought to live in a swank mansion with a cool Danger Room full of holograms and robots, they're not interested in running through a carefully strategized training exercise. They want to break stuff. That anarchistic spirit is a big part of why we fans love them, but it makes sense that Cyclops of all people would need a little time to adjust to that, which is something we don't see much in the original '70s stories. This is precisely why I love the First Class tales: they find all the cracks we'd forgotten were in the classic stories, and exploit them in the most fun way possible.

(I contrast this with some of the current continuity X-books, which find the cracks in classic stories and exploits them in the angstiest way possible. Oh, look, it's another Machiavellian shame in Professor X's past! How ever will the X-whoevers react?)

And as Cyclops tries to get to know his new team, Moira McTaggert offers him a set of taped "interviews" she conducted with the new X-Men, each describing an adventure they had in their teens, as they were first coming to terms with their mutant gifts. It's a blatant ploy to make the adult X-Men just as accessible and hip to younger readers as the original teenaged First Class, but the vignettes are clever and engaging enough to make it work. My personal favorites were Banshee's tale - in the form of an Irish folk song written by a friend of Banshee and performed in my head by Flogging Molly - and "Wolverine: Agent of S.N.I.K.T.." Since Wolverine can't remember his past, the idea of a "young Wolverine" tale is patently ridiculous. Wolverine himself knows that better than anyone, and thus gives us some glorious hogwash, lampooning everything from other Marvel heroes to spy fiction to Arthur Miller in the process.

It's not a perfect comic. The characterization in the framing story errs a little on the side of caricature in places. Colossus, for instance, is portrayed as provincial, naive, and comic book Russian enough to start planting crops in the school lawn, saying, "If we don't farm, how will we eat?" (It's funnier if I choose to see this as a fear that without home-grown veggies, his new life in America will mean all McDonald's all the time.) But there's far more entertainment packed into UXFCGS than even six initials should allow, well worth the cover price. Particularly when the cover in question is the Skottie Young masterpiece seen above.

- JC