Giant-Size X-Men #1: Second Genesis! Review

Giant-Size X-Men #1: Second Genesis! Review

Medium: Comic

Release date: 6/1/1975

Review date: 10/15/2024

Score: 5/10

You know, they tried, and that should probably count for something, right?

I’ve never read any of Chris Claremont’s now legendary run on X-Men, and so when I looked up where to start, this was the first issue everybody pointed to - a one shot X-Men comic not written by Chris Claremont. Cool! I think our perspective of comic books and their popularity is a little skewed by the recent inescapability and cultural smothering of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but comic books have gone through boom and bust cycles before, with Americans getting sick of superheroes long before modern audience had to really ask themselves if they gave a shit about a “Shazam!” sequel. Today the X-Men are ubiquitous with the genre, and in the 90s were even bigger than Jesus, but when the series first launched in 1963 the comic was only averagely popular, running for just an original 66 issues before turning to reprints and eventually ending all together. By 1975 Marvel was looking to reboot the title as a quarterly special series, and so relaunched it under the name of “Giant-Size X-Men,” whose first issue was so popular that Marvel then changed their mind from a quarterly series to a bimonthly series instead, written by Mr. Chris Claremont.

So that’s how we got to me reading “Giant-Size X-Men” #1, and so now then for the other question that I’m sure is top of your mind: is “Giant-Size X-Men” #1 any good?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhh, well, you know, like I said, they tried.

The trouble is that the part of “Giant-Size X-Men” #1 that made it so unique at release has now, in 2024, aged very poorly.

Most superhero comics are America centric - it kind of comes with the territory, superhero comics are an American genre whose writers were Americans who were writing for an audience of Americans about problems they could relate to in America. Today the genre makes a much more active effort to not center the universe on the United States, but this isn’t just a modern decision. One creative editorial choice for rebooting the X-Men series was to make a newer, more international team. The plot of the issue is that the original X-Men team have been captured and Professor X needs to recruit new mutants to build a new team to rescue our missing heroes, so he recruits the mutants Banshee from Ireland, Sunfire from Japan, Wolverine from Canada, Storm from Kenya, Nightcrawler from Germany, Colossus from Russia, and Thunderbird from the US to help with the rescue. On paper, that international focus is a really interesting decision and should help spice up and expand the purview of the X-Men and their quest to help other mutants - if mutants live all over the globe, then the X-Men should also operate globally in order to be able to assist as many mutants as possible.

The problem is, this comic was written in 1975 by a white American guy, and it really, really shows. Even outside of the comic using two genuine racial slurs in its dialogue, the expanded focus of wanting to highlight new characters from other cultures only really works if the writer knows anything about those other cultures, because if not, then it's just some white American guy firing off cultural stereotypes based on their loosest possible understanding of certain countries’ histories and cultures. Sunfire is a surly, aggressive Japanese man obsessed with honor, Storm was worshiped by grass skirt clad tribesman in Kenya as a god before joining the X-Men, Thunderbird is literally an Apache racial caricature who goes on about “the white man” and “the old ones sitting slumped against their doorsteps, dreaming dreams of glory long gone. The Apache were meant to be hunters, warriors... not sad eyed simpering squaws.” It's pretty hard in 2024 to look at all that and not cringe from second hand embarrassment; those are bottom of the barrel racial stereotypes right there. And while you and I can maybe sit here all day and say “hey, you know what, they probably didn’t mean it like that,” I just know that I personally would not feel comfortable recommending this issue to anyone without first hitting them with some caveats.

Alright, OK, racial stuff aside though, how is the comic? Fine. Truth be told, outside of this issue being the introduction of a couple of iconic X-Men like Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus, I’d have said the whole endeavor was pretty unremarkable and forgettable if I hadn’t happened to peek that the most recent modern big X-Men comic arc was called “The Krakoan Age,” apparently named after the villain of this issue, the living mutant island Krakoa, so I guess it ends up being more important than I’d assume from this first impression. Otherwise, I don’t know man, there wasn’t a ton worth remarking about going on; Iceman gets a sick Cleveland burn in, I guess? This issue was fine, massive caveats aside, but I do really hope things improve once Chris Claremont starts writing next release.