Recently, Marvel comics has been attempting to keep up with DC's amazing over-arching, interwoven tales that encompass their biggest and best heroes. With comic events like Civil War, Marvel has come close to the same brilliance as something like DC's Identity Crisis. (I know that Infinite Crisis, 52, and Countdown are all more recent references than the one I give, but let's face it, IdC was groundbreaking and refreshing.)
Where Marvel shines, however, where they've always had success, is in the smaller over-arching story arches within specialized titles (i.e. Fantastic Four, Avengers, The X-Men). Today, X-Factor #46 hit shelves in comic stores, it marks issue 11 of 13 in the Messiah CompleX story.
Ever since House Of M (another great comic book multi-title-tie-in event) the number of Mutants has been dwindling, dropping below a couple hundred. However, there is a new mutant birth. Now the X-Men find themselves on a search for this 'Messiah' (that's where the name comes from) but they aren't the only ones looking for the kid. The Purifiers (a cookoo religious group that thinks mutants are the devils work) and the Marauders (led by Mr. Sinister and former X-Man Gambit) are also looking to destroy and abduct the baby, respectively. That's not to mention that Cable also has plans for the nubile mutie.
Now that all the exposition is out of the way (they call that 'laying the pipe' in the biz), I can tell you why you should care.
This crossover event is one of the best in recent Marvel, and comic book, history. Not since the Age of Apocalypse epic has there been an X-Men multi-title arch written so well. House of M and the subsequent DeciMation titles were decent and very solid, however they lacked the cohesion and consistency of MC.
Each individual writer/artist team is responsible for the part of the arch that reaches through their title and each one has managed to not only keep the story moving and make it look good but also lead seamlessly into the next title. Of course there's a shift in the artistic style but all of them are above par and each highlights a unique aspect of the action that seems to perfectly coincide with that part of the story.
Marvel is handling this crossover brilliantly. Its unfortunate that this kind of quality and this kind of excitement is only seen during these mini-series that involve a pool of writers and artists. The X-titles are a very unique entity in comics, there are literally hundreds of characters that can be used in each book. But the problem is that all of these characters are split between Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, New X-Men, Cable & Deadpool (soon to be Cable, Deadpool), The EX-iles, and New Excalibur...I think that's all of them...no, wait, forgot the new X-Force and Young X-Men that will start after the MC is over. With all the characters, save Wolverine who seems to be in 8 out of 10 Marvel comics published every week, being delegated to certain teams, it means that artists or writers that have a talent for writing or drawing that character cannot always wield that artistic weapon. It's hard enough to understand what has happened in the X-Men series in general let alone all of the off-shoots.
Of course there is always the option of the continuity-less Astonishing X-Men, the old school glory of X-Men: First Class, or the alternate continuity of Ultimate X-Men, but each of those lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Don't even get me started on trying to figure out who's dead, or depowered, or married, or gay, or a skrull.
The bottom line is that the Messiah CompleX storyline is fantastic and worth every penny, but unfortunately after the CompleX...X-Men will simply suck.
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