X-Men: Prelude to Schism
“Prelude to Schism”
Writer: Paul Jenkins
Artists: Roberto de la Torre, Andrea Mutti, Will Conrad, Clay Mann, Jay Leisten & Seth Mann
Colourists: Lee Loughridge with Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Rob Steen
Editor: Nick Lowe
We’ve all seen plenty of bad comics. But far rarer is the truly inexplicable comic. The one where, no matter how you twist and turn it, you just can’t figure how anyone could have thought it was going to work. Prelude to Schism is a book that doesn’t work in concept or in execution.
“Schism” itself is the X-books’ upcoming summer crossover. They’ve already told us that it shakes up the line and sees the X-Men splitting into two groups, one led by Wolverine, the other still following Cyclops. (Which accounts for two monthly titles. What happens in the others, heaven only knows.) It’s obviously a big deal for the line, and they’re promoting it heavily – so you might expect that Prelude to Schism would be some sort of lead-in to the big event. A prelude, as it were, to “Schism”.
Not so. Or at least, only barely so. Each issue of the miniseries shows the X-Men sitting around on Utopia waiting for Cyclops to decide what they’re going to do about some apparently horrendous threat that’s on the way. Are they going to run away, or will they stand and fight? The threat itself is never named or even particularly discussed, but presumably it shows up again in “Schism” proper. And that’s basically it. Repeat for four issues.
The variation comes from having each issue re-tell the scene from a different character’s perspective – Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops and Wolverine, in that order – and filling most of the issue with flashbacks. Do those flashbacks have anything obvious to do with “Schism”? Not really, no. For the most part, it’s a bunch of glorified origin recaps or mundane scenes from the past.
Now, credit where it’s due. “Schism” isn’t Paul Jenkins’ story, and presumably he was told what material this book was supposed to cover. Judging from what he produced, the remit for this series was “vaguely hint at an impending threat for four issues.” That’s not exactly a promising start. If this is what the editors asked for, they only have themselves to blame.
And to be fair, there were easier ways of filling the pages. Many writers, asked to build up to a crossover for four months without advancing the plot one iota, would have written an unrelated story, thrown in a bit of tension between Cyclops and Wolverine in the name of foreshadowing, and had a bit of portentous muttering about the horrors to come. This is at least aiming higher.
It just misses.
There are a whole load of problems with this series. Most of it is given over to flashbacks, but they’re flashbacks that don’t really seem to add up to much. Given the cast, and the plot of “Schism”, you might guess that the idea was to do a series of character portraits around the theme of “what makes a leader”.
The first issue, with Xavier, is the best. Instead of droning on about his past, he talks about his relationship with Scott as his protege. This actually does have something to do with Xavier’s role as leader and father figure, and it’s bolstered by some attractive art from Roberto de la Torre (albeit that the muted colouring is trying all too hard to make things look serious). The flashbacks are still fairly slight scenes, and ones that seem clumsily shoehorned into Scott’s agonising, but at least it vaguely plays into some sort of theme that might in some way connect to something.
So it’s about leadership? Well, hold on there. Issue #2 is Magneto, and it kicks off with an excruciating sixth-form metaphor (“we’re all magnets”) which Jenkins then proceeds to forget for most of the issue before cycling back to it out of nowhere at the end. Dominating the story is an eight-page recap of the Testament miniseries from 2008, followed by another seven pages of his first fight with the X-Men from 1963. While I suppose these qualify as formative moments for Magneto, no coherent point emerges, and they don’t really have anything to do with leadership. Testament was primarily a Holocaust story, and even Jenkins’ precis is more interested in young Magneto’s relationship with his father. So could father/son relationships be the theme? Apparently not, since X-Men #1 is a straight fight scene, which Jenkins tries to recast as something about misplaced passion.
Issue #3 sees Cyclops himself reminiscing about his long-dead mother Kate, so perhaps it’s about parent/child relationships after all. For today’s purposes, she is apparently a vastly important character whom he thinks about all the time, and not merely a bit part character from a handful of childhood flashbacks. But the story kicks off with a sequence of Cyclops reflecting on the merits of his followers, notable in its own right for some awful dialogue. “Kitty and Storm: powerful mutants, possessing the best qualities of their sex.”
From there, it’s some stuff about young Scott having an MRI, another chance to enjoy the jumping-out-of-a-plane-with-Alex stuff, and a montage which is presumably meant to cover the early X-Men stories. Artist Will Conrad appears to be under the impression that Scott and Jean met at a regular high school – is it that hard to alter the art to get rid of the extra students in the background? He keeps talking about his mother, but no real point emerges. Instead the story drifts back to meditating about Scott’s responsibilities as leader, but with no particularly clear link to any of the material that came before it.
By issue #4, Jenkins seems to have degenerated into recapping Wolverine’s Official Handbook entry. His opening monologue is excruciating: “If you think you can’t do something, chances are you’re right. Then again, chances are you’re wrong. But there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time on this planet – and trust me, I’ve been around a while – if you say those words out loud you’re usually one hundred per cent correct.” This is a greeting card homily about the power of self-belief, but Hallmark would at least have expressed it intelligibly.
From there, we shift to a recap of Origin, with mention of Logan’s grandfather so… perhaps it’s about parents after all? Or maybe not, since it stops talking about him and moves on to other stuff from the story. Then we get a bit of Weapon X. And that’s basically it.
True, it’s got some signs of ambition. And true, the art’s decent. But Prelude to Schism gestures vaguely in the direction of two themes – leadership and parenthood – while failing dismally to convey anything about either of them. It isn’t a story, even a bad one. It does nothing to build anticipation for “Schism”; what little it does to hype that story ends up merely irritating. For much of the time, it just recycles familiar old material in a patchwork of flashbacks that degenerates over the course of the series into a glorified clip show.
It is a comic which fails so comprehensively that I still cannot be sure what it was trying to achieve in the first place. And this is the first shot in a storyline that’s supposed to be a major event? What were they thinking? That’s not a rhetorical question – I cannot for the life of me figure out on what planet this could ever have looked like a good idea. It’s tempting to dismiss it as a cash grab, but if that was all they had in mind, they’ve have done something more conventional.
There was an idea here. But what was it? What the hell was it?
It also reminds me of a joke from one of the Simpsons Radioactive Man comics, a panel of a huge piece of machinery falling towards a man who exclaims ” No time to get out of the way! Only time to talk about it out loud!”
Why are the leaders of the X-Men all standing around in a hallway while a potential species ending threat is looming? Whether they’re staying or going, shouldn’t some kind of mobilization already be taking place? It’s beyond pointless, it’s just completely ridiculous.
Man, what happened to Jenkins? Was he replaced by a talentless clone, like James Robinson over at DC?
This whole standing around having flashbacks while a big nasty bad guy is on the way format reminds me a lot of those pointless tie-ins during the first Sentry miniseries, also by Jenkins.
At the least shouldn’t we be seeing the upcoming tension between Scott and Logan. Paul has pointed out that Scott may be foreshadowed for a fall over the past couple of years, but Logan has been pretty loyal. He accepted fprming and staffibg X-Force, accepted Uptopia, accepted the decisions about Hope and even about turning him into a vampire. All while saying Scott was making the tough calls correctlt. the only real point of tension is logan keeping X-Force up and running in secret. That could be a very big deal, but hasn’t been referenced anywhere. I can’t help but think that Wolverine saying Cyclops can’t cut it is going to seem to come from nowhere just because they want to split the team. This wouldn’t have been hard to do, but the set-up is all missing.
Someone help me with this question. The Astonishing team was formed to provide a public mutant team; this is why the more “heroic” mutants were chosen by Cyclops. It seems like this never developed story wise. Plain X-men was supposed to be the published mutants in the Marvel world book. Neither of these xonce
Someone help me with this question. The Astonishing team was formed to provide a public mutant team; this is why the more “heroic” mutants were chosen by Cyclops. It seems like this never developed story wise. Plain X-men was supposed to be the published mutants in the Marvel world book. Neither of these concepts got very far. So why are they trying to force it again with an event?
I think ‘Astonishing’ was created to attract new readers: big name creators, avoidance of crossovers and continuity, mostly recognizable characters. Both Whedon and Ellis paid lip service to the teams’s new role as a Positive PR tool, but then they got more interested in the stories they were telling and it was all muddled further by publishing delays until everybody stopped caring one way or another. That the book is now under the wise stewardship of Daniel Way should alert you to its current irrelevancy.
As for the plain X-Men title, the first two story arcs did seem to reach out to the rest of the Marvel Universe, featuring stories with Blade, Vampires, Spider-Man, and the Lizard. The current arc is decent so far, but back to chasing its own tale with the big guest stars this time around being themselves.
In the interviews the writers say that Wolverine and Cyclops have a pretty decent relationship right now, and it’s whatever happens in SCHISM #1 that divides them.
Obviously PRELUDE isn’t effective setup, but their game plan apparently doesn’t call for slowly rising tension between the two characters.
Yeah, I don’t think creating a conflict between the two was necessarily the way to go to this, but I would have appreciated a miniseries which showed us what Cyclops and Wolverine’s relationship is now. You know, why it works, why we should care if it falls apart. Obviously that’s not what Paul Jenkins was going for, but he is after all Paul Jenkins. Most of his stuff is pretty unreadable and baffling in concept, so even if there were some coherent plan to this it wouldn’t have turned out any different.
God, the threat in Schism isn’t going to be Jean/Phoenix related, is it? That’s always been the wedge between Scott and Logan in the past.
Perhaps “Prelude to Schism” is all a bluff. They aren’t concerned about what is coming, but they know they are being watched. So they are using Danger to simulate them standing around wringing their hands while they make their preparations to defeat whatever it is that needs defeating.
And since Cyclops is all about preparedness, he anticipated this scenario and created the simulation in advance, which is why they have to speak in very vague terms about the threat.
Still not sure how the flashbacks fit into this interpretation. Maybe Danger thinks the X-Men/all humans have such big egos that whenever there is a spare moment, the immediately begin recounting their own back stories. Or maybe, when Cyclops designed the scenario, he felt it needed some padding and added some origin filler that would either be known to their enemies or would provide minimal strategic value.
The true nature of “Schism” itself is that, having handily vanquished the threat du jour, Cyclops and Wolverine get into a heated argument over pizza toppings for the post-battle feast.
Pheonix and pizza toppings. I like both ideas.
“They’ve already told us that it shakes up the line and sees the X-Men splitting into two groups, one led by Wolverine, the other still following Cyclops.”
This is the problem, really. Having presented ‘Schism’ as being the series that will set up the new status quo for the X-Men until next year’s big event, and told the fans in detail what the consequences of it will be, the series itself is pretty extraneous, let alone the prelude to it…
They haven’t really said the other team will be lead by Cyclops but that’s probably a safe assumption.
I heard that one team is going to be lead by Deadpool and the other also by Deadpool.
I haven’t really been reading the books, but it sounds to me like Schism will be basically Civil War but with Wolverine as Cap and Cyclops as Iron Man.
Lol @Andy Walsh and @Valhallahan
I don’t have my actual copies of Prelude to Schism on hand; can someone who does have access to copies (or a better memory than me) confirm whether they actually mention that there are specifically enemies coming to Utopia? I remember a lot of “it’s coming,” “should we run and hide or stay and fight?,” “this is the worst thing we’ve faced” etc., but has anyone mentioned enemies specifically, as opposed to something more metaphorical?
Because it occurs to me that they may be referring to a new anti-mutant law or something being passed, and debating whether they should stay in San Francisco and fight it in the courts or go back into hiding.
I’m just spitballing this because it would kind of ring false for there to be a single moment where Wolverine or Cyclops does something the other disagrees with or for Jean to come back and choose one over the other or something like that, and the result is that half the team splits off from the other half (not to say that comic book writers/editors couldn’t come up with a story that rings false, I’m just hoping it will make more sense than that). But if it’s a major status quo change that the team disagrees on how to handle as a policy going forward, that would make more sense. I’m basically imagining something exactly like Civil War, except instead of arguing over whether to fight the new law or obey it, they argue over whether to fight the new law or just run from the police.
Or maybe they just have to decide whether or not to kill the Scarlet Witch again. That’s always good for getting superheroes arguing.
Actually, whatever’s coming definitely is described as physical thing that’s actually moving toward them.
Adam: Interesting info, thank you.
It does continue to irk me that the stories should be explained in interviews. I try and avoid the interviews and just read the stories, but that doesn’t always seem to be how things are set up nowadays. And as others have said, the change coming suddenly after all these years doesn’t sound too promising. Let’s see if they can make it work. (Although if it really is pizza toppings I’ll go along for that ride!)
@lambnesio
Thanks. I couldn’t remember specific quotes – just lots of “I say we fight!” “We need to decide before it gets here!” stuff – and my actual issues are in a box where I can’t get at them.
Jason Aaron confirmed that the oncoming threat in Prelude to Schism has nothing to do with what’s coming in Schism in an interview on iFanboy.
Wait, what?!? In what sense, then, was “Prelude to Schism” in fact a prelude to “Schism?” Was the title itself a red herring, just as the contents appeared to be?
Yes, the ‘prelude’ mislead was downright annoying. So we try to read the 4 issues as separate character studies of the same scene, but all we get is re-caps. With the exception of Xavier, the introspective studies weren’t really that good, as Paul says, setting up no direct tension or foreshadowing between these characters and the premise. I am not even sure these 4 characters are going to have main roles during Schism, now.
Interesting point on the parent-child thing. Only I, too, can’t see the objective of these 4 issues, even if that were so.
I sincerely hope Jenkins is going to creatively cram all this in successfully during Schism. But he has surely failed under the pretense of the prelude.
It HAS to be intentional. I, too, am interested in what the intention was.
I am left with speculations that this event coincides with the end of Avengers:Children’s Crusade, and the reason zero-to-nil is revealed is because the Schism material would ruin the Arc’s good run.
The Scarlet Witch is apparently back and, surely, there will be repercussions with the X-Men. But then there’s that stupid Hope-as-a-character guimmick Marvel seems so bent on, so who knows…
Is it wrong that I enjoyed the first one and bought the next couple? Total X-Noob and I like all the back story and that.
is marvel ever going to apoligize for prelude to schism??
or give people their money back? cmon
It seems now, with what has occurred in AvX that “Prelude to Schism” could actually be read as a prelude to the current crisis.
The point of Prelude seemed to be to reinforce Cyclops as the heir to Xavier, with only the formality of removing Charles himself left to be dealt with. The timing of Prelude remains curious, but the dividing line between Cyclops and Wolverine needed to be clear before Schism happened; thanks to Prelude, we can be certain that the intentions of both men were pure. (Leaving aside the dubious reasons for Schism in the first place: first, we’ve been there and done that with the separate teams; second, Wolverine was being stretched too thin with fans and writers alike complaining of the character being watered down.)
While I agree with much of the criticism, I’d recommend to Prelude haters to re-read it now with the events of AvX in mind and see if it couldn’t be interpreted as foreshadowing.