The First X-Men!

There is a problem with success in an ongoing comic book series. If the story goes on too long, then the weight of accumulated details begins to crush the life out of it. Marvel Comics is the longest story ever told, filled with more characters and places and events than any other single narrative. DC reboots periodically allow freshness. Marvel is stranded, depending on its creators, to wrench yet one more tale from the mountainous heap. Neal Adams and Christos Gage try to do just that in The First X-Men. 

UNCANNY SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THIS POST. 

We begin with Wolverine and Sabretooth, still called Logan and Creed. These savage brothers work as mercenaries and Logan gets a notion to try something different, something larger and nobler. Creed is reluctant but trusts his brother enough to tag along. When the first mutant they work to save is a young woman called Holo who can cast beautiful illusions, Creed finds something more to stay for than crowing when Logan's project fails. 

In addition to Holo, this "team" adds a fantastically strong chap dubbed Yeti and kid who can blow- things-up-good referred to as Bomb. They seek out other mutants, working from files stolen from the government which is itself spending great sums of money to "solve" this mutant problem. One such mutant is Eric Lensheer, a master of magnetism, who spends his days hunting Nazi war criminals. He tells Logan to scram. 

An insidious mutant named Virus works for the government and uses his ability to invade minds to take control of people to become his "mounts" and carry him around. Yeti's brother is one such mount this fledgling team of X-Men rescue. But alas Virus maintains control of his mounts even after they've been severed from him, making Yeti's brother a spy in the middle of Logan's fledgling team. 

They work to rescue other young mutants such a human fireball named Meteor, and a pair of brothers who I guess I'm supposed to know, but as far as I can tell are never named. Another program from the government is Bolivar Trask's first round of Sentinels and our team needs to fend them off as well. It's quite a melee. Charles Xavier gets into the mix as well. 

I love the work of Neal Adams, but I have to call out this stuff which while dynamic is so chaotic it's hard to read all the time. The eye too often goes where it shouldn't as the storytelling tumbles apart. Nonetheless by the end of the five-issue effort many of the most famous characters are where we find them at earlier stages and as promised we do learn why Creed hates Logan so much and why Logan hates himself as well. The tottering monument hat is the Marvel Universe has added yet another log, but the weight is still enormous. 

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