Catching A Breath. Thoughts, brainscrapings and debriefings on X-Men Legacy’s first arc.

Arc #1 is dead. Long live Arc #2.

What a great, well-rounded book. Vertigo standards on a Marvel X-monthly.  –BleedingCool

So, listen. It took folks a while to get into it. We expected that. We ripped open the Tauntaun’s-belly of spandex expectations and crammed it so full of rogueish ideas and unconventional weirdness it nearly ruptured.

 I get it: X-Men Legacy is a prestigious title. It’s been around for years. Sure – it’s always been the edgy one, the focused one, the sidewise-thinking-one, but until now it’s clung to many of the same tropes that identify the other X-titles. Guys in costumes. Team-ups. Good Vs. Evil. Familiar, straightforward, digestible stuff.

 And then we came along with Vol.2 and flipped everything over. We did strange and dark things with the book. We made it about a boy with a broken brain. We made it about self-worth, coming of age, romance, dispossession and loneliness. We made it about parental pressure. We made it about The Finding Of Oneself, and about fighting demons in the cavities of one’s own mind.

 We made it about a psychic kid with really big hair.

 David Haller – Legion – does not wear spandex. He is not part of a school or organisation. His adventures are densely-told and don’t often pause to explain things three times.  And yeah… no surprise: it confused a lot of people. Who the f*ck is this guy? they asked. Where’s Wolverine? What’s with the haircut? Why should I care? WHY SHOULD I CARE?

 Thank the dark and elder gods so many people hung around to find out.

 Spurrier is offering a book that celebrates some of the lesser-known X-Men and has a voice and style distinctly different from every other mutant-oriented title.  Final Verdict: GREAT. –IGN

 Oh, we picked up a bunch of new readers too – people who didn’t identify as X-fans or Marvel fans, folks without preconceptions who were attracted to the idea of a creepy, curious story in the mutant canon. Many of them have become our staunchest supporters. But the really brave ones were the longterm Legacy fans.  Readers who self-identify as marvelites – who read the big mainstream Marvel books because that’s what they like. Readers who – let’s be honest – must have been freaked-out, mystified and uncertain after they’d read Episode #1. Readers who, in many cases, “just didn’t get it”.

 But they stuck around. And things fell into place. And stuff exploded, and the X-Men showed up, and there were fights, and it’s become slowly clear that this book doesn’t exist solely on the outskirts of the Marvel Universe, but is buried deeply and secretly in its chest, and yet it still wasn’t about any of the that, was it?, and things got deeper and darker and weirder and weirder…

 …and at some point those readers got it.  And they still get it.

 So, to them: thank you. To all of you, who have shown us so much loyalty and trust: thank you, thank you, thank you. We’re six episodes in – the first arc is done, the next is just beginning, with bigger and stranger beats lined up as far into the future as we dare imagine. The feedback we’re getting now is overwhelming in its positivity.  To us on the team, that’s a critical part of the book’s future: we hear stories every day from folks who dismissed the new series out of hand – why should I care? why should I care? – yet who’ve been persuaded by friends and peers to go back and give it a shot; to adjust their expectations, to stick with it, to trust us to take them for a ride.

 We ask a lot of you guys – pay attention! answers are coming! make the effort! – but by jove it’s bloody working.  Thank you, thank you.

The House of Ideas can still surprise with decent strong self-contained series amidst the ever-expanding core of densely connected titles. It’s that rare exception: this book you should absolutely judge by its covers. –Weekly Comicbook Review

 Look. I don’t want this to become some icky autohagiography or self-centred panegyric. I’m not here to pat myself on the back. I’m here because I was as terrified as the rest of you that X-LegV2 was going to perish on a wave of apathy, resentment and confusion. I let the first pulse of reactions – I don’t get it! I don’t get it! – get under my skin and gnaw at my brain. I’ve had sleepless nights wondering if we should’ve taken the easier route – the lazier route – and done something nice and safe and familiar.

 We didn’t. And we won’t.

 Big things are coming to X-Men Legacy. And small things. Small things which are quieter and stranger but – in many cases – infinitely more important than the flashy stuff.

 To the X-Leggers; the Legion-legion… I have one last favour to beg. Please: continue to spread the word. Fight the apathy and the inertia and the stagnation. Reassure the spandex-purists out there that there’s nothing to fear, nothing to resent. Tell them that “new”, “strange” and “unconventional” should be good and healthy and delicious words to the comic-buying public.

 And, hey, here’s some catchup-enabling crassness: tell them the collected t.p.b of episodes 1-6 will be on shelves very soon. Tell them episode 7 is a tasty jump-on point. Tell them I personally imprint a psychic high-five on every copy sold. Tell them we won’t let them down.

-S.x

In the space of four issues Spurrier has introduced me to a character I had next-to-no-clue about and made his adventures simply unmissable. 9/10  — Paradox Comics Group