Review by Frank Plowright
As with almost every X-Men related graphic novel issued in 2024, Dead X-Men bridges the tragedy of Hellfire Gala: Fall of X to the point where Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X pulls all the plots together again. The Dead X-Men are so known because they were the newly elected X-Men team at the Hellfire Gala, almost immediately killed by the forces of Orchis. Steve Foxe doesn’t bother explaining how it is they’re not only alive, but positively kicking, and that sort of sloppiness characterises the entire story. If you’re titling your story Dead X-Men at least have the respect for readers to explain why it is they’re actually alive. Foxe is a writer who keeps everything bombastic and desperate in the hopes of disguising underlying questions needing resolved.
The Dead X-Men are searching for a timeline where a human version of Moira McTaggart still exists, which is explained as important in the scheme of bigger X-Men plots. The key team member is Prodigy, able to absorb the powers and knowledge of other mutants, while Cannonball, Dazzler, Frenzy and Jubilee come across as names randomly drawn from a hat. Their purpose is to protect Prodigy, but pretty well all they do is make up numbers.
Constantly changing artists reflect the different realities the team drop into, rather than indicating a story seemingly conceived in a hurry. The sample art is from Bernard Chang who contributes solid superhero action to every chapter. Anyone who enjoys stories of alternate worlds rotated via pivotal moments of Marvel history will find the spreads illustrating several examples the best aspect of Dead X-Men.
Fostering a constant sense of desperation as the team jump from one place to another, eventually chasing a specific target, may disguise how ordinary Dead X-Men is. There’s not enough involvement with the main team, and the final insult is the final page just leading into Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X instead of resolving the grim moral judgement discussed for a while beforehand. Mediocre.
