Marauders #1
Written by Gerry Duggan
Drawn by Matteo Lolli
Colored by Federico Blee
Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit
Design by Tom Muller
Published by Marvel Comics

Marauders

The Skinny: X-Men’s big Sci-Fi experiment embraces the New Wave. On a boat.

Marauders #1 is the X-Men book I’ve been waiting for.
The X-Men, right down to their creation as five white teenagers in 1960’s America, has always been a metaphor for oppressed groups. This isn’t a new idea, whether Marvel Editorial admits it or not. But with House of X, Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz changed tack. The core concept was still there, but Krakoa altered the dynamic and outlook of mutants so it became less of a struggle between them and human oppressors and more of a big, Golden-Age Science Fiction meditation on divergent futures.
But with Marauders #1, at least some corner of the X-line is back on solid New Wave SF ground, and examining the structures of what Krakoa hath wrought, because there’s no such thing as a problem-free utopia. The problem being that not everybody can use the gates to get to the distant island. In some cases, it is because the countries those gates are in have cordoned them off. For Kate, (formerly Kitty) Pride, it’s because Krakoa won’t let her in.
So, along with a crew of Iceman, Storm, and accidentally the original Pyro, she sets to sea in a boat to bring the mutants that want to come to Krakoa but can’f find a way. The result is the usual superhero dustup against a cadre of generic Russian soldier baddies, but the premise has legs to explore the real consequences of the new era. We get to see who’s being left behind, and where the cracks are in Moira and Xavier’s plans. Plus, this looks like the book where we’re going to see all of Emma Frost’s scheming play out, and that was the most interesting part of House of X, in my opinion.
X-Men as a concept always works better for me when it deals with characters rather than concepts. Marauders looks like the book where we’re actually going to see the two intersect in interesting ways. Issue one is out now digitally from Comixology, and in print at your local comics shop. Go check it out.

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