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THE X-MEN SAIL AT DAWN!
Even in this glorious new dawn, Mutantkind faces hardships and oppression from their human counterparts. Led by Captain Kate Pryde and funded by Emma Frost and the Hellfire Trading Company, Marauders Storm, Pyro, Bishop and Iceman sail the seas of the world to protect those hated and feared!
Gerry Duggan and Matteo Lolli’s Marauders debuts this week. And this is a very important comic book. This is the first comic book during Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men reboot not written by Hickman himself. Gerry Duggan is hit and miss for me generally speaking.
I initially wasn’t interested in this series when details were released during San Diego Comic Con’s Dawn of X panel. But as House of X progressed and we learned more details of the mutant government on Krakoa. Especially the role of the Hellfire Trading Company, my enthusiasm for Marauders grew enormously.
Artist Matteo Lolli and writer Gerry Duggan had a couple year run on Deadpool a few years back so they’re very familiar with each other. Lolli and color artist Fredrico Blee do a good job making Marauders look and feel similar to Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva’s HoX and PoX visuals. The line art is very clean and I must say Matteo has a much better visual take on Storm that either Larraz or Silva. Although I’m not too impressed with Nightcrawler in this comic.
Despite having a couple of interesting sequences, this book doesn’t really have a standout visual like you hope for in a comic. Overall the graphics are fun and lighthearted, matching the tone of the story. Matteo Lolli and Fredrico Blee feel like the right artists to execute Duggan’s vision for Marauders.
Mauraders #1 is very much a Kitty Pryde story. But I wish Duggan had maximized his real estate more and fleshed a couple more characters. Iceman is basically a running gag, Storm hardly gets any shine and Pyro gets the most interesting reveal but it’s not explored at all. This is a good story to start with. We learn how Kitty becomes Captain, what the mission of her team is, how the core members are assembled, how they got their name and got a decent bit of action at the end.
I think it’s gonna take some time to get used to people other than Jonathan Hickman writing X-Men stories again. Gerry Duggan has a successful debut on Marauders but I was expecting a bit more honestly. The amount of ground covered doesn’t really justify the page count in this comic. He meanders on a bit in couple sections and doesn’t give himself much room to flesh out many characters other than Kitty. The reveal from Pyro is easily the most exciting thing about the story and I hope this gets expanded on sooner rather than later. The story has a much lighter tone than Hickman’s writing and should serve as a good change of pace from some of the other ultra-serious X-books. Matteo Lolli’s art might not be my favorite but it it’s the tone of the story very well.
#x-men #dawnofx #marauders
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