X-Tinction Agenda
If Years of Future Past was a confused book with some good ideas, X-Tinction Agenda is a simpler beast. By all appearances, it’s here to fill the pages.
“X-Tinction Agenda” is not immensely fertile territory for a Battleworld mini. The original story, way back in 1990, was notable mainly for wrapping up two long-running stories – it finally reunited the X-Men after a lengthy period when the cast were scattered around the globe, and it tied up the original Genosha arc, in which the country was a thinly veiled allegory for apartheid-era South Africa. Neither of those is a particularly pressing issue today. Of course, the story also opened the era of Genosha as a basket case state on the verge of collapse, and that’s effectively what Marc Guggenheim and Carmine di Giandomenico are running with here.
Incidentally, the solicitation for issue #2 describes “X-Tinction Agenda” as the “inaugural X-Crossover”, which it wasn’t. That would be “Mutant Massacre”. “Inferno” was earlier, too. But if somebody at Marvel was remembering “X-Tinction Agenda” as more of a landmark than it actually was, perhaps that’s how it ended up getting a series here.
At any rate, Guggenheim’s approach is to do a story set in a world which diverges off from mainstream continuity shortly after “X-Tinction Agenda”. The original story ends with Alex and Rahne deciding to stay on Genosha and help to rebuild. In practice, they were almost immediately hauled back into service as members of Peter David’s X-Factor. But here, they do indeed stick around to rebuild.
By the time of the story, the main problem for Genosha is an incurable “Extinction Plague” which is wiping out the mutants. The Legacy Virus, in other words, but we’ve got to justify the title. Not unreasonably, the rest of the X-Men have quarantined the island to stop the plague spreading. Havok wants them to send over Triage (the healer from the Bendis run) so that he can try to cure the plague. The X-Men won’t send him. So the Genoshans do a raid to get Triage, and the X-Men do a raid to get him back, and what do you know, it turns out that one of the human Genoshan scientists is really scheming to bring back Cameron Hodge, and they all have a big fight with him, and that’s pretty much it, really.
The story is littered with easter eggs, as Guggenheim has fun referencing pet characters who haven’t been seen in years, like Graymalkin, and alluding to untold tales which are themselves distorted versions of regular continuity. So Beast has brought a bunch of dead X-Men forward in time, which has nothing really to do with the plot, but at least suggests a wider history. Using some of the more modern characters who weren’t around in 1990 helps there too, even if Triage’s role is dictated by plot considerations.
Di Giandomenico is always a solidly stylish artist, and he does a decent job with a large cast; if the parade of cameos is going to be the selling point, you need a guy who can make everyone distinctive. Okay, the storytelling clarity is sometimes a little vague, but chaotic fighting is pretty much what the story is calling for.
A couple of elements seem like they’re gesturing in the direction of a sequel, but might just be a further case of the book trying to imply a wider continuity. It ends with a character returning from the dead, but since his regular MU counterpart is alive and well (as far as I can remember, anyway), it’s hard to see what the point would be of following it up. More strangely, the crowd of familiar characters also includes a completely new character called Bulletproof who gets a power-up and a moderately big role in the finale, as if he was being set up for something else. Perhaps some version of him is due to appear later on. He doesn’t exactly get much of a chance to grab the attention with his charisma here.
It’s a simple story, but it has some pretty obvious problems. The quarantine is perfectly reasonable. But the Genoshans aren’t asking to break the quarantine. All they want is for Triage to go in and use his powers to cure the plague. Okay, there’s some doubt about whether it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, can’t he just stay there? There’s no particular reason for the X-Men to stand in Triage’s way if he wants to take the risk, and nobody seems to have asked him. The story would work a lot better if the driver was that Triage wasn’t willing to take the risk. Then you’d have an actual moral dilemma. It’s less of an issue that the X-Men are willing to violate the quarantine themselves to get him back – I guess they can always hide away when they get back, until it’s clear whether they’re infected – but it still feels like something that isn’t given as much play as it should be.
All in all, a pretty routine affair. It’s competent enough on the whole, but there’s really not much to it beyond playing spot the character.
I actually enjoyed this a great deal. The art was dynamic, and it’s nice to see rarely-used X-characters these days (we have multiple versions of the original team running around; God forbid Rictor has a few lines a year)
Unlike Years of Future Past, which didn’t hold up and ended on a downer note, I thought this had real zip to it. I wouldn’t mind seeing Guggenheim and this artist get an ongoing.
Also, I’m one of the few people who really enjoyed Guggenheim’s short-lived Young X-Men book. It feels like so many of the Yost/Kyle/Guggenheim X-kids have such potential.
Yeah I really found myself enjoying this and Inferno way more than I thought. Both of those books kind of had a true what if? Feel to them and we’re just silly fun.
Oh and they told a story… Yeah I’m looking at you Old Man Logan.
Yeah but I spotted Maggott so it was all worth it.
He was in X-Men ’92 too! It’s the Year of Maggott!
Agreed, Mutant Massacre and Inferno (and Fall of the Mutants) all came sooner. X-Tinction Agenda is the first crossover where it’s impossible to do anything but read all of the titles, though, down to each chapter being numbered. Massacre has very subtle connections between the titles, and while the last two issues of X-Factor and Uncanny X-Men form a tight-knit story, even the earlier issues can be read in any order and still enjoyed. X-Tinction is the first time where it’s the modern, you-must-buy-every-chapter-in-order crossover.
(Splitting hairs, I know, but I can see why someone at Marvel thinks of it as the first mutant line crossover.)
What Greg said.
Mutant Massacre and Inferno were crossovers the same way Acts of Vengeance is a crossover.
But if you want to say that X-Cutioner’s Song was a crossover in a narrowly defined way, then X-Tinction Agenda was the first X-Crossover and Mutant Massacre and Inferno were something elese.
Anyway, getting away from distinctions between narrow definitions and broad definitions of one particular word…. the original X-tinction Agenda was an awesome story for a number of reasons…. and it was nine parts through three titles…. it started closing down one era of storytelling and opening up another…. which got more or less killed in two parts when Claremont got marginalized then left… and Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld and the others started Image.
In any case, a 9 part story where the bad guys kidnap some protagonists, take them to an exotic setting with some awesome action art (and some pin-up art) and throughout the middle the good guys split into roaming factions before re-assembling at the end for a showdown with the big bad?
I love that.
I’m looking forward to this re-hash.
X-Tinction is the first time where it’s the modern, you-must-buy-every-chapter-in-order crossover.
I dunno, you’d be pretty confused to read the X-Factor chapters of Inferno without reading the Uncanny chapters, and vice versa. Maybe the dialogue and text boxes would fill you in, but it’s meant to be read in order.
Anyhow, I liked the original X-Tinction Agenda well enough for the plot and how it drew the characters together from all corners of the world. But that hideous Bogdanove art absolutely ruined it for me. Especially when it was buried behind that awesome Jim Lee cover of X-Factor #62, with a shirtless Havok, head bowed, arms upraised. What a disappointment to open up and see this:
https://psychodadcomics.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/storm.jpg
It was the *Bogdanove* art that ruined it for you? I read X-Tinction Agenda for the first time a year or two ago, and was utterly aghast at the Liefeld New Mutants chapters. I mean maybe that’s a case where you just expect it to be bad and you just get on with your life, but it was so much worse than I was actually expecting.
Liefeld art is “bad” but it’s fun. Back then it was fun.
Bog is good but it doesn’t carry the same energy as Lee or Liefeld or Silvestri.
Don’t forget poor Whilce Portacio. I remember when he started on X-Factor, that art just leaped off the page.