The Creators – Gerry Duggan – Writer, Pepe Larraz – Artist, Marte Gracia – Colours, VC’s Clayton Cowles – Letters

The Players – X-Men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Synch, Sunfire, Polaris, Wolverine, Rogue), Ben Urich, Forge

The Story – The X-Men have decided to set up shop in New York which both catches the attention of Ben Urich and finds the team facing off against a giant monster.

The Take – Springing from Jonathan Hickman’s established status quo for mutantdom is a new team of X-Men featuring members old and new and when it eventually comes down to it, they work like a well-oiled machine. This issue does a lot of things like setting up a new headquarters in part of Central Park, a newly minted Seneca Gardens where everyone might come to have a little downtime outdoors and their base codenamed The Treehouse, introduce the team back into New York’s already bustling superhero population as well as give readers a glimpse of a new villain, one that just might give them a run for their money. On the list of mysteries to solve, to those outside of the Krakoan population, is just how the mutants can resurrect. Ben Urich is looking for answers as he knows for a fact that Jumbo Carnation died and just how it is that the man is now among the living is baffling to him. It also intrigues this new villain who needs to find out just how it is that mutants are able to return from the dead, for if he is to enact any plan against them, he needs to make sure they have no way of coming back. Gerry Duggan who is no stranger to the X-Men returns to chronicle the new adventures of this particular team and he does so quite well, both tying it back to the current interconnected X-books and by having it do its own thing. Joining him is Pepe Larraz who also does a great job at making it pop from the page, his pencils sharp and clean and when it comes to the alien kaiju, quite inventive. There is even one further threat introduced in this book which just so happens to deal with that menace from space, that being a group of galactic gamblers who have decided that humanity, including the mutants, need to be wiped out of existence which will also make things complicated for the team going forward as well as a great read if this issue is anything to go by. In a nutshell, this book has everything that one could ever want from an X-Men title and it out of all the X-books, might be the one to keep an eye on.

Worth It? – Yes.