Review by Frank Plowright
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are US government investigators of inexplicable events, or those featuring the paranormal in other respects. In three shorter stories before the longer title piece a sealed prophecy is stolen from the Vatican, surviving witnesses to a 1948 UFO incident are being murdered, and Mulder breaks into the Pentagon. Stefan Petrucha writes all three with a good instinct for following the TV show formula of keeping readers guessing until the end, and of ensuring the answers Mulder wants elude him. An extra joy for fans of the show is the Lone Gunmen featuring in the third story.
Drawing the X-Files isn’t as easy as might be assumed. If it’s to follow the pattern of the TV show it requires a great amount of talking punctuated by small moments of action. This was relatively early in Charlie Adlard’s career, and he’s very good at presenting conversation-heavy material in a visually interesting way, something that would serve him well when progressing to The Walking Dead. A peculiar fault recurring several times, though, is people being seen from a distance meaning there’s no way they should subsequently manage to get into cars and drive away. He barely manages a likeness of Gillian Anderson as Scully, but she can be distinguished by her red hair, and doesn’t seem greatly comfortable drawing David Duchovny either, but his versions serve the story well enough. Most importantly, Adlard improves story by story, with the layouts becoming more creative and the characters having greater space surrounding them.
Petrucha’s ability to weave a plot that would fit the TV show is best exemplified over the three chapters of ‘Firebird’. He supplies strangeness in one of the many secret bases the US government has in New Mexico, and it seems somehow connected with the massive meteor that fell to Earth in Russia in 1908. It’s overlaid with a narrative contrasting Mulder’s willingness to believe in the impossible with Scully’s scientific absolutism, and conspiracy theorists will be delighted to be introduced to the secret cabal that controls the world. Engaging personalities feature and it all builds to a world-threatening event.
A final brief story has Mulder and Scully investigating a disappearance. There’s a clever ending making this a form a crossover.
A quality selection is the same content supplied in The X-Files Collection Volume 1 as published by Topps in the USA, but this unusual production of a paperback with a dust jacket makes it the more appealing book. Sadly, there’s no credit for design. IDW’s bulkier collections feature all this material in The X-Files Classics Volume One, also gathering half of the following X-Files Collection Volume 2, but for the dust jacket version you’ll want Project Aquarius.
