Book Review: X-Men First Class - Volume 1

X-Men First Class - Volume 1 by Paul Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is an interesting collection as it contains writer Jeff Parker's top five favorite stories of the eight issues he wrote for the first X-Men: First Class mini-series, so this book contains Issues 1, 2, 4,5, 7 and a selection from the Annual.

The X-Men are a challenging to get into. There are so many characters, so many different versions of the team, it's hard to find how to get in. This book takes readers to the beginning-sort of-where there was only Professor Xavier and his five X-Men: Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey, and Angel. In many ways, this is similar to the Untold Tales of Spider-man concept from t 1990s which provided untold tales from Spider-man earliest except rather than taking readers back to the 1960s and giving that sort of feel, this book has the X-men's first adventures taking place in the then-present day.

Parker has the X-men meeting up with Doc Connor of Spider-man, Doctor Strange, and Thor. These stories are good. I think Parker makes them quite a bit more likable than they were the original stories, but I don't feel I ever really gained a lot of insight on to anyone except for Warren in Issue 7 plus most of the stories didn't have any sense of scale or real interest in the battles faced. Still, no issue was bad. The characters were fun. I liked the idea in Issue 2 of Scott and Jean being forced to take time off as the rest of the team wrestled with the Lizard.

Issue 7 is my favorite as Warren has been absent from class while Professor Xavier's been away and Quicksilver is out looking for his sister, The Scarlet Witch. The two events are tied together. The book explores Quicksilver's behavior which was meant to be protective in the Silver Age, but comes off as a bit controlling to modern readers. The story's got a great sense of fun and humor, just as Parker would later show on Batman '66 and Flash Gordon.

The short from the special deserves some praise. In it, Beast and Iceman go to the Museum of Curiosities to investigate a signal of mutant life. It's a very fun story with some surprising twists.

The rest of the book is fine and if you're a fan of Parker's other work, you'll like this too.



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