Death of X #1 (of 4)

   The fact of the matter is, I'm almost completely out of touch with both the X-Men franchise and the Inhumans comics - and this book is all about a rapidly-approaching war between the two.

   (I do read All-New X-Men, but that's it - and it's only marginally connected to the other mutant books.)

   The first issue of the Death of X mini-series checks in with both "families" - we see a small team of X-Men investigating a call for help from Muir Island, and a small team of Inhumans watching as the cloud of Terrigen Mist sweeps across the city of Matsumoto in Japan.

   That mist has been sweeping across the world, transforming regular humans (the few who carry Inhuman DNA) into new powered Inhumans - but the mist has a completely different effect on mutants.

   There are elements to the story that mystify me. For example, the X-Men part of the story takes place "One Year Ago" - and the Inhuman part is set in the modern day. I have no idea why, but I trust that'll be cleared up in future issues.

   In the meantime, we have some excellent artwork by Aaron Kuder and what promises to be an interesting story by Jeff Lemire and Charles Soule.

   But I'm not crazy about killing characters, and we see some of that already - and the promise of much more.

   So will this revitalize the X-Men franchise, and bring the Inhuman franchise along for the ride (as Marvel no doubt hopes)?

   We'll see.

Grade: A-

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