The X-Men are in a strange place right now. “From the Ashes” has divided the fandom, the opening sales success of the books petering out for a lot of the line. There have been a lot of problems with “From the Ashes”, and it’s been met with some pretty big failures. However, there have definitely been diamonds in the rough, and X-Men: From the Ashes: Demons and Death #1 is one of them. There’s two different stories in the book, both of which takes place in the time period between the end of the Krakoa Era and “From the Ashes”, with the first story focusing on the tragedy of Havok before he joined the new X-Factor, and a story starring one of Wolverine’s most dangerous villains: Omega Red. This is some good old fashioned character-driven X-Men goodness, and it’s a shame that more of “From the Ashes” isn’t like this.
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Alek Paknadel wrote the Sentinels miniseries, one of the better installments of “From the Ashes” and he brings that skill to this book. The first story picks up from where the Krakoa Era book Dark X-Men ended, revealing why Havok looked normal in X-Factor #1 after being resurrected as a zombie by Madelyne Pryor. The story focuses on K’yrb, a demon that was helping Maddie with Havok, as he works to cure the unfortunate Summers brother. There’s a good mix of action and character throughout the story, and it brings back some classic X-Men characters like N’astirh. It’s honestly a pretty great story, all told, nicely paced and full of emotion. It shows the twisted nature of Maddie and Havok’s relationship, and is a wonderful little chapter of her evolving story. Paknadel does a fantastic job with every character and I’d love to see him write even more about Maddie in the future. The first story is awesome, and I figured this issue couldn’t get any better after finished this story.
However, the second story focusing on Omega Red is even better. Omega Red is a character that is very hard to like. He’s a monster, and it often seems like the more we learn about him, the worse he gets. Paknadel does a brilliant job of actually making Omega Red sympathetic, using flashbacks to tell the story of the only person who was actually nice to Omega Red as he returns to his hometown to find her. Of course, things don’t go well, and we get to see Omega Red as a righteous agent of vengeance. Paknadel puts us in Omega Red’s head for the first time, and does a great job of making us actually feel bad for him. There’s some tremendous action in this story, showing just how scary that Omega Red can be. There’s a moment where he talks about how the members of the Politboru called him “righteous” as a joke, but the story shows that he has that tendency in him. Omega Red is a monster, but sometimes, only a monster can make things right. That’s the throughline of both stories, honestly โ monsters who have done terrible things making even worse evils right.
The art by Phillip Selvy does a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. The linework is heavy and gives the book’s art a darkness that works brilliantly. His art on the first story, at times, leaves something to be desired when it comes to the designs of the demons and zombie Havok, but it definitely works for the story. There is a Polaris demon that is pretty awesome, and he does a good job with Maddie and Polaris when they appear in the book. With Maddie, sometimes it feels like the printing process messes up the linework on the character, but only her, which is strange. However, Selvy’s page layout and detail are pretty good overall, giving this story some cool visuals.
The second story’s art is just like the writing, superior to the first. The flashbacks have a nice sepia tone to them, supplied by colorist Arthur Hesli (who does a tremendous job on colors throughout the issue), that set the scene. He does a great job of capturing the sadness of the script in this story, as well as the hopelessness of Soviet life, which is very important to its tone. Selvy is able to capture the complexity of Omega Red, allowing readers to see him in an entirely new light. The action scenes in this story are great, but that’s a given after seeing how Selvy and Hesli rendered the fights of the first story.
After reading this issue, I want Paknadel, Selvy, and Hesli to work together on either a Maddie or Omega Red book. I didn’t have high expectations for this book, but was pleasantly surprised with every page. Demons & Death is the perfect title for this book. It’s pretty dark, but there’s a lot of emotion and sadness, a sense of melancholy from broken love. You should definitely pick this book up. “From the Ashes” can lean too much on nostalgia, which is something of a problem, but this book’s character focus is perfect and it’s what we love about the X-Men.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
X-Men: From the Ashes: Demons & Death #1 is on sale now.