Comic Review: Empyre: X-Men #1

Empyre: X-Men #1

Marvel Comics

Writers: Jonathan Hickman & Tini Howard

Artists: Matteo Buffagni & Nolan Woodard

Empyre‘s main event has been set up to be a large-scale story with dramatic tension and questions of morality. This X-Men tie-in, however, takes a different approach. This story instead is a goofy, fun adventure with some of the lesser-known mutants.

Following the Cotati’s rise to power during the events of Empyre #1, the species lands in Genosha in preparation for an attack on Wakanda. X-Men fans will remember Genosha as being the site of a horrible mutant massacre at the hands of The Scarlet Witch. The land first appears to be a wasteland, but soon the Cotati come face-to-face with a hoard of zombie mutants.

I didn’t expect a tie-in to go in this direction, and although it sounds kind of cheap, it actually works for a fun story. The full extent of the present danger hasn’t been explained yet, but the fact that there is a large population of zombies with superpowers is likely to be a problem. For the most part, they are just behaving like normal zombies, but in later issues, I hope to see what they can really do.

The artwork doesn’t do much to sell the threat of the zombie hoards. The art, works best in closeup of the main characters, especially when expressing anger and seriousness. The zombies themselves look ghoulish, but not terrifying. Most of the zombies seen in this issue just have greenish skin and dark circles around their eyes, nothing particularly haunting. The tone of this comic is light and comedic, though, so the zombies don’t need to be frightening necessarily.

The art lacking the most detail is the background. Genosha is almost entirely made up of orange dust, with some rocks and silhouettes of destroyed buildings scattered throughout. The dust works to obscure the background as well as most of the hoards of zombies. This could have been used as a plot device to confuse the characters and make them lost and frightened, but the dust isn’t mentioned once by anyone. Instead, the dust comes across as a way to cheat out from having to draw more than needed.

While the backgrounds suffered, the characters all look perfectly fine, and emotions are conveyed in closeup really well. I also really enjoyed the lettering in this issue, which uses a lot of different colors and styles to bring the hoards of zombies to life.

So not only is an alien species invading to take over the world, but there is also a hoard undead mutants wanting to kill and eat everyone (typical zombie stuff). The mutants that were chosen for this mission are certainly not the X-Men’s best, but no one expected a problem this big, so they sent who they could. I know very little about these characters, but they are already forming a nice enough dynamic that I’m interested in seeing what happens to them. The small group of mutants having to fight both of these threats may not be powerful enough to do this on their own, but they do have unexpected help coming their way.

The premise is simple and the artwork is sometimes lacking, but the characters are enjoyable and the zombies are a pleasant surprise. Given that this is a tie-in, I assume this will all sort itself out by the end of the series with no real effect on the main event, but it is a fun side-story nonetheless.

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