Review by Frank Plowright

The X-Men’s participation in Marvel’s first Civil War occurs during the period where the world’s mutant population has been reduced to just 198 people, and the X-Men themselves are confined to their Westchester faculty. David Hine begins with a breakout. Some mutants are mad as hell and not going to be locked up any more seeing as Domino and Shatterstar are giving them the opportunity for freedom.

Civil War concerns the argument about whether or not superheroes should be registered with the US government, and just as it polarises the general superhero community, it polarises mutants. Bishop has no qualms about working with the authorities and hunting down the escapees. For different reasons the four remaining X-Men are also hunting for them.

Much of X-Men: Civil War seems going through the motions, but then Hine will throw in an interesting idea such as mutant Johnny Dee able to control others via dolls they create. Yes, it’s a variation on old Fantastic Four villain Puppet Master, but Hine’s use is transferred to an irredeemably sleazy character lacking redeeming features.

Yanick Paquette draws most of the X-Men’s immersion in Civil War, but without any great inspiration, all crowded panels, posed people and strained faces. It says a lot that when Aaron Lopresti draws a few pages of the third chapter there’s a finesse absent in Paquette’s work on the remainder.

There’s a clever resolution to a crisis point, but one might have thought Hine would let the X-Men resolve things in their own story. It leaves this as admirably created to stand alone rather than requiring the reading of other material to be understood, but a story that never rises above average.