Scott's Take: X-Men: X of Swords

X-Men: X of Swords by Jonathan Hickman and more is a 22-issue event comic that leads into a new status quo for the X-men. They are going from Dawn of X to Reign of X. This event is supposed to be leading into the middle of the planned X-Men trilogy of story arcs. This event does have one of the more complicated stories. Before this book and very long ago, the living island that the X-Men are currently residing on used to be part of two islands that were connected by a land bridge. When demons invaded, part of the island was split off by an ancient mutant civilization that lived on this same site. Most of those ancient mutants were stranded on one island that moved off Earth, somehow, into another dimension where they were forced to fight demons to survive in a multi-generational war. The other island stayed here with a few mutant survivors who survived and rebuilt after the demon attack.

 

Recently, the X-Men have founded a new nation on the island that remained on Earth. Now in the present, the mutants from the non-earth island are poised to invade the Earth with the demons who now serve them in a strange alliance. A third party offers to let the space mutants and their demons use her land in another dimension as a stepping stone to get to Earth if they can defeat the Champions of Earth. The champions of Earth will be drawn from the X-Men on the island.

 

Each side gets ten champions who must retrieve a sword and then do whatever the third party wants. Some are contests to the death. Others are rather strange events that force the X-Men to take part in some humorous activities. I am aware that a lot of this sounds like the plot of Mortal Kombat.

 

Leading the X-Men in the contest is Apocalypse and is joined by Wolverine (Logan), Magik, Cable, Storm, Cypher, and several others. While they go through the challenges, there are many X-Men left behind who have to await the results of the contest and prepare humanity for the impending invasion if the X-Men lose. All the X-Men champions get really awesome moments.

 

My favorite characters in this were Wolverine, Magik, Jean, and Cyclops. Despite Jean and Cyclops not being champions, they play a vital role late in this tale. They have one of the most amazing entrances into a large-scale battle that I have read in a long time. Wolverine is the best at what he does, but he is also forced into some contests that are not in his favor like modeling on a cat walk.  This event comic actually made me care about Gorgon who is one character I never found very interesting. He gets some strong moments in this tale.

 

The new antagonists and villains created for this event are very interesting and there is a lot of world building in this event. There is plenty of death, magic, action, some humor, and plenty of drama in this event that changes things massively for the X-Men. There is also a good amount of character development and some setup for the future.

 

This is not a book for younger readers since a lot of characters die. The deaths include major names on both sides. Usually, event books are not the best for new readers, but the first few issues do a good job of explaining what is going on and why various things are important. One could jump into this read without too much trouble assuming they are okay with skipping some stuff

 

X-Men: X of Swords was a fun read for this reader. If one would like to read what happens after this book, the easiest way to follow up with this would be Reign of X series which collects the various titles and puts them in chronologically order. 

 

  

I read this book via the Dallas Library and on the Hoopla app. 

 

Scott Tipple ©2022