Official site is http://marvel.com/comics/issue/60429/death_of_x_2016_1
There is a substantial amount of comic book history needed before you can really get into this book. In 2015, Marvel had it’s big, yearly comic book event, Secret Wars, which rebooted the Marvel universe. In that series, Cyclops was killed, but since the Marvel Universe was rebooted, he should’ve come back to life. In the various X-Men books following Secret Wars, Cyclops has been absent and it’s been implied that something bad happened. Further, the X-Men and Inhumans seems to be enemies regarding what happened. Well, with the first issue of Death of X we are finally getting a chance to find out what truly happened.
The story takes place eight months ago. Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans, has just released the Terrigen Mists upon the world in the hopes of finding more Inhumans and a massive cloud of the Mist travels around the world giving people super powers. The cloud makes its way to Muir Island, and island of mutants and Cyclops and his X-Men go to investigate. What they find is that the Terrigen Mists are poisonous to mutants and killed every mutant on the island. In fact, Cyclops appears ill and collapses after inhaling some of the gas. The final panel shows Cyclops declaring war on the Inhumans for this transgression.
Now, it isn’t entirely clear what brought about this abrupt change in Cyclops’ behavior, but my guess is that Cyclops died off panel after inhaling some Mist and Emma Frost used her psychic powers to convince everyone Cyclops is still alive and to declare war on the Inhumans. Emma Frost loves Cyclops very much and is likely infuriated from his off panel death. This is just my hypothesis though.
This is not a fantastic story, but a necessary one to bridge the gap between Secret Wars and the X-Men and Inhumans books. I more looking forward to see if there was any fallout from events in the Secret Wars, but it appears anything concerning Cyclops in the Secret Wars was erased and we just continue as if it never happened. Oh and if you didn’t read Secret Wars, Cyclops became the Phoenix and had his neck snapped in the book. I haven’t seen that remotely addressed in any of the current Marvel books I’ve read.
The art is fine.
Score: 5/10 Not great. You can skip this if you want. Only worth a purchase if you desperately need to know what happened to Cyclops and the X-Men.
Muse Bank 