Mister Fanboy Comics Review: X-Men: Deadly Genesis #6

Mister Fanboy Comics gives us a quick review of the final issue in this X-Men miniseries.

Marvel's Merry Mutants seemingly never get a break. Following on the heels of the House of M, with it's depowering of 90% of the world's mutants, we had the Decimation storyline, a loose collection of titles that looked at the House of M aftermath. Foremost among them was the X-Men: Deadly Genesis miniseries, written by Ed Brubaker.

I really enjoyed the first issue, but issues 2-4 didn't do much for me. Once Vulcan came out of the shadows, we learned his identity and things got very interesting. Vulcan was revealed to the be long-rumored but never identified third Summers brother. He's the younger brother to both Cyclops and Havok.

As we all know, when the original team of X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, and Angel) were captured by the living island of Krakoa, Charles Xavier gathered s new team of X-Men to save them (Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Collosus, Banshee, Sunfire, and Thunderbird), with Cyclops having escaped the Island and teaming up with the new team to save the old. Or so we thought. It turns out that there was a team that was led by Vulcan, consisting of three others, that were captured by the Island and presumed dead. The team were students of Moira's at the Muir Research Facility. Why haven't you heard about this yet? Because the Professor conveniently wiped the mind of Cyclops. It gets complicated by suffice it to say that Cyclops survived. When Krakoa was jettisoned to space, Vulcan and other surviving team member Darwin survived.

Vulcan comes back to Earth, attempting to get revenge on a now depowered Professor and his team, killing Banshee in the process. Once all is explained, Vulcan realized that much if his anger should be directed to the Shiar Empire and flies off into space, presumably to battle the Shiar. Vulcan is very powerful and the full breadth of his powers has yet to be identified. However, the series had one more surprise as Darwin's life-energy was revealed to have kept Vulcan alive for years and once separated from Vulcan's body, survived. Darwin's powers are cryptic yet intriguing -- he evolves.

So the series did a number of things:

Reaffirmed that the Prof could be a selfish bastard
Identified the 3rd Summers brother
Killed off Banshee (can't wait to see Siryn's reaction in the upcoming X-Factor)

Introduced an intermediate team of X-Men (between the 1st and 2nd teams), killing off two
Reaffirmed that the new Marvel Girl has taken the mantle of her mother
Sent Vulcan off to space setting up Brubaker's upcoming run on Uncanny X-Men

I like Brubaker's gritty writing a lot but was a bit leary about his run on the X-Men, taking over for Chris Claremont (who will be taking over Exiles once he rebounds from a health scare). All of my fears were ungrounded it appears as Brubaker has done a fantastic job. Even though the series slowed a bit in the middle for me, in retrospect, considering what it set out to do, it did a damn fine job. If you didn't get the single issues, pick up the trade paperback once it's issued. You won't regret it.

Series Grade: B+/A-

- Mister Fanboy Comics