It’s been nearly six years since I last picked up a new X-Men comic with any real consistency. The last series I read with any regularity featuring the merry mutants was Jason Aaron‘s Wolverine and the X-Men. Which apparently ended around six years ago. It’s fair to say that I’m a little out of touch with that side of the Marvel Universe (though I have been following both Old Man Logan and Dead Man Logan, but those series didn’t really involve the X-Men as much as a team book would). More than a little, honestly. A lot has happened in the six years I’ve been away, and since I barely pay attention to solicitations I have missed most of it.

But with Johnathan Hickman steering the X-Men in a new direction with both House and Powers Of X, I thought this might be a good time to start reading X-Men comics again.

But how easy is it to jump back in relatively blind after more than half a decade away? Join me, and I’ll tell you.

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Expect spoilers as I try to make sense of the comic.

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Much to my surprise, I was expecting to read House Of X #3 last week, not Powers Of X #3, and it wasn’t until I opened the comic that I realized just how much I had been looking forward to the comic.

If you’ve been reading the entire series so far, and by that I mean everything under the House/Powers Of X banner then you’ll have absolutely no problem reading this comic. That said, you can also get away with just having read the House series. I’ve noticed that this seems to have more of a focus on the Now of the Marvel universe, and consequently is actually a little harder for me to follow who is who (unlike the future focused Powers Of X that starts everybody off on the same footing), but House Of X has a more cohesive story that works alone or intertwined with the sister series.

House Of X #3 has got perhaps one of the most classic X-based story tropes (or at least one of the things I attribute most to the X-Men): Sentinels.

I’m not sure whether it’s because of the X-Men: Animated Series and that amazing theme music, or some of the earlier comics I read featuring Sentinels (despite reading X-Men issues across decades because of reprints, Operation Zero Tolerance was one of the first stories I read as it happened, once I was finally old enough to get to a comic shop a city away from my home town in England), but for me the X-Men’s classic enemy has always been those giant extermination machines.

And so it is, for the first time in a very long time, that I got to watch the X-Men in action, on a deliberate mission rather than reacting to threats to a school (the Jean Grey School from Wolverine And The X-Men). I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed that.

What I didn’t remember was how creepy Professor X is when he looks kinda like Ultimate Reed Richards.

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Then you have the near-religious language of Xavier… and it feels like a crack in the veneer. That we might be finally seeing the villain in the story, but I think that might just be my feelings around Xavier bloody walking again. And being creepy.

Yet again, the mutant language and bonus pages return, which add a far more interactive layer to the comic than you would otherwise expect if you have the time, patience or google ability to translate it. I have none of these things yet, but I’m fond of the option that Hickman has provided us.

This issue showcases the X-Men at their most efficient. We get to see the team plan and begin to execute an operation – and crucially, we see the reactions to that. It’s a really interesting turn of events and one that I am pleased to have read in print.

“You see I know how you humans love your symbolism, almost as much as you love you religion. And I wanted you – I needed you – to understand… you have new gods now.”

Magneto, House Of X, #1 p.47.
I keep leaving this image and quote in the column because, for me, it’s emblematic of the series as a whole. It’s Hickman, through Magneto, setting the stage for the future of the X-Men.

There’s also another fantastically quotable Magneto line in this book;

“For you to die, you would have to be forgotten…”

Magneto, House Of X, #3 p.5

I feel like eventually, this column will just be full of Magneto quotes, but I am oddly okay with that. I hope you are, too.

I can’t wait to see what’s going to come our way next week.

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Will I understand next week’s installment in the saga, House Of X #4? Do I regret skipping six years of X-Books? Am I ever going to find out how Xavier is walking again*? Did I get the right release schedule?

We might find out next week. We might not.

Marvel provided a FREE copy for review purposes, but I read the comic in print from my LCS.

*The answer is yes, but it made no sense when two of my friends told me individually last week, but it basically boils down to “comics being comics” which I’ve kind of accepted with an air of nonchalance.