by Charlie Brooks, CMRO Contributing Writer
World War Hulk: X-Men
Issue #1
Written by Christos Gage, Art by Ed McGuinness & Andrea Divito
Published: August 2007
While World War Hulk #1 featured a big epic battle between the Hulk and Iron Man, many of the early crossovers in the event have been surprisingly devoid of smashing. Sure, we’ve seen a brief scuffle between Ghsot Rider and the Devil, and we’ve had Humbug rip off a poor alien’s head over in Heroes for Hire, but one would expect a lot of gamma green fists flying in an event called World War Hulk. Well, for those who have been waiting for a big old fight, World War Hulk: X-Men #1 has just what you’ve been looking for. This tie-in miniseries can basically be described as “Hulk versus all the X-Men.” And by all of them, I do in fact mean all of them.
The events of this miniseries take place between the pages of World War Hulk #1, during the 24 hours the Hulk gives the heroes to evacuate New York City. While the heroes go into scramble mode, the Hulk has some unfinished business with Professor Xavier. Xavier was part of the Illuminati group that decided to shoot the Hulk into space, but he was off-world when the actual vote was held. The Hulk wants to know how Xavier would have voted. However, because he arrives clad in armor, even angrier than usual, and willing to throw a punch at the slightest provocation, the X-Men immediately go into defense mode. At the start of the issue, only Beast and a few new recruits are on hand. However, Wolverine arrives with more X-Men in the issue’s final pages, and as the series progresses we can expect the scale of the fight to get bigger.
If you’re new to the X-Men, good luck figuring out who the characters are and what their personalities are like. With so many X-Men, we only get a brief comment about who they are, and it’s usually telling us what their powers are. Powers do not equal a character’s personality, but folks who read this probably aren’t looking for a lot of character interaction. This is all about the biggest Hulk/X-Men throwdown there has ever been. If you are familiar with these characters, writer Christos Gage does a great job of juggling so many personalities and making sure that the one or two lines the bit characters get still match their established characters. Meanwhile, the Hulk is spot-on consistent with how he’s acted in Planet Hulk and World War Hulk, and there’s a nice moment near the end where Xavier probes the Hulk’s mind and winds up sharing the events that occurred at the end of Planet Hulk with the rest of the X-Men, giving us a moment of empathy for the jade giant. But that moment doesn’t mean the fight will stop – one of the key themes of World War Hulk is that while the Hulk has a good reason to be so angry, the actions he’s taking in his rage go too far.
World War Hulk: X-Men #1 is probably the best of the early crossovers to World War Hulk. Its story is simple, but it fits right in with the main event in both tone and style. The art by Andrea Di Vito is crisp and gorgeous, the characterization is strong, and we don’t have to do a lot of timeline juggling to figure out where this one fits in with the events of the main storyline. If you’re going to do an event tie-in, this issue shows how you do it right.
[...] World War Hulk: X-Men #1 [...]