Review by Karl Verhoven

When the world’s mutant population created their own independent nation in Krakoa every mutant was welcome, but a twelve member group was established to provide general direction and enforce boundaries. Political expedience ensured it consisted not just of people who’d been regarded as heroes, but also the immensely powerful who’d previously engineered events just in service of their personal aims.

Immortal X-Men picks up when Krakoa has been established for a while and the membership of the Quiet Council has seen changes, with another due following Magneto’s resignation as Kieron Gillen begins this series. It’s about the politics of power. Gillen quickly reinforces that plenty of Council members have their own agenda, and the betterment of mutants alongside humanity isn’t their priority. Leading off with the bonkers narrative of Nathanial Essex, or Mr Sinister if you prefer, Gillen switches the viewpoint with each successive chapter offering insight into various members of the Quiet Council, yet at the same time provides viable threats to reveal their motivations. After Sinister, in turn we’re privy to the thoughts of Hope Summers, Destiny, Emma Frost, Exodus and Sebastian Shaw, although in the case of Exodus it’s via a far weaker crossover chapter.

An unusual X-Men title is given the comforting polish of Lucas Werneck’s eye-catching art, making the unconventional look traditional. The mutants are suitably Olympian specimens and that disguises there being little in the way of conventional action sequences. Michele Bandini on the final two chapters spinning from the 2022 Hellfire Gala is good, but occasionally overplays expressions and doesn’t have the dazzle Werneck renders.

There are X-Men comics you can read in a few minutes. They have lots of words, but those words don’t say very much. Immortal X-Men isn’t among them. It’s an intelligently composed, complicated egotistical stew packed with resonant personal insights. “Even I, the great mutant terrorist, occasionally wish I was not” is one surprising disclosure, and not from whom you might think. By the end Gillen has delivered a fundamentally fractured Quiet Council, at odds with each other and with contradictory purposes. Several are manipulative, several are ill-intentioned and several are seemingly innocent. After reading this you’ll wonder not that the Quiet Council functions now, but that they ever did. Where, oh where is it all heading? Into Vol. 2 of course.