X-Men: Noir #1 (Marvel – Van Lente / Calero)
“The coroner’s men flipped the redheaded corpse over so Dukes and Magnus from Homicide could get a better look at her. ‘Better’ being a relative term in this case, with the claw marks that slashed her face into a featureless, bloody mask and turned her guts into a butcher shop explosion. “But the tattoo — the simple, encircled ‘X’ above the left shoulder blade — remained intact, and Dukes pointed it out with the toe of his wingtip once Peter the rookie was done heaving up lunch.
“‘See this ink?’ he said. ‘Means she did time at this reform school upstate, run by this shrink, Xavier…'”
Yes, this came out about a month ago, but issue #2 is just around the corner and no better time to throw out a warning to shot for potential fanboys who might be looking to not waste their money this month.
Fred Van Lente and Dennis Calero are both great creators with good work and good careers. It is not their fault that Marvel has put them on yet another money making, multiple cover project that has no real substance to it. This is simple Marvel’s way of trying to capitalize on Frank Miller’s The Spirit being in theaters. They took a pulpish, gritty, hard-boiled story with the X-men characters inserted into it. Nothing interesting… nothing out-of-the-box. Except Maybe Scott using a gun, but still… $3.99 for this? No thank you!
Issue Grade: D
