Although this story was uneven, and the writer continued mishandling a few recurring themes, the extremely high quality of the art and the information about the upcoming Fall of X event made this story into an exciting, interesting read. Read Full Review

Readers, Spurrier is a lot to handle, and X-Men: Before the Fall Sons of X #1 would be extremely difficult to dive into without knowledge of Spurriers style, tones, and of course Legion of X and Sins of Sinister. Therefore, if you venture into this comic looking for something new to wet your whistle, I think youll be mildly confused, to say the least considering I have half a mind to know what I think is going on anyway! Fans of Legion of X will love the heck out of X-Men: Before the Fall Sons of X #1 and should most certainly pick this bad boy up. Read Full Review

This is a chapter that will likely be better appreciated when collected as part of the "Fall of X" saga, but for now it's an interregnum installment that gets the job done as well as it can amidst so many concurrent plot lines. Read Full Review

X-Men Before the Fall: Sons of X-Men #1 prepares for future events but weakens the development of significant characters. Read Full Review

X-Men: Before the Fall Sons of X #1 isn't bad and as a finale to close the books on previous storylines, it does a decent job. But, that seems to be all it does and some of that with a wave of a hand. Coming after an event like Sins of Sinister too, it all feels like an odd timing of release. Those who got hooked from that even will be lost by it all. This is one for those who have been reading these series up to this point only, new readers will want to stay away. Read Full Review

Legion of X/Nightcrawlers struggled under the weight of too many characters and plots; the coda here thrives on mostly just being a story about Mother Righteous (by far the most interesting part of LoX) and Legion (although he's primarily here as an antagonist to Mother), with a splash of resetting the status quo for various characters and of course the inevitable (and excellent) bridge into getting us back to focusing on Kurt in Uncanny Spider-Man. And of course Phil Noto's art is gorgeous and full of clever ideas. I particularly loved the use of digetic comics pages and panels to represent flashbacks to previous comics

JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/xJz6buvNFZ
MY PHYSICAL COLLECTION (FOR SHOWING OFF): https://psycamorean.libib.com/

Having skipped Legion of X and not being 100% sure about what Spurrier was doing early on with Nightcrawlers, I read this expecting the worst but he has proved me wrong. It started too busy or I'm just unware of what transpired before to give events meaning but it picked up momentum midway and ended strong mostly thanks to the way he used Legion and Mother Righteous. Noto's art also surprisingly got stronger as the issue went along and had some nice splash moments. Noto to nit pick a bit, has to work on his full figure shots because upper bodies don't fit with the bottom parts making the characters weirdly uneven but that's me being picky.

A pretty cool one-shot as we go into the next series of Spurrier writing Nightcrawler. Speaking of which, I'm very glad the focus is shifting back to him. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Legion's character in Legion of X, but it feels like the last time Kurt was the main character was in Way of X and the first few issues of Legion of X. The new Uncanny Spider-Man title isn't quite what I expected, but it certainly gains my interest. Also, as KittyNone stated in their review, I really enjoyed the use of previous comic pages to represent memories/flashbacks.

Si Spurrier really went OFF.

It's a prettily-drawn and pretty eventful wrap-up for Legion of X. A good comic--but there just aren't enough pages to make it a great one.

The sheer number of plot threads to tie up, questions to answer, and bits of foreshadowing to do make it feel rushed and make some of the individual cases unsatisfying. Exactly how Mother Righteous's faith/debt magic works is the example that frustrates me most, but I don't think it's the only vague point.

I want to avoid being overly critical: I'm mainly frustrated because I want all of these ideas to get more space for in-depth exploration. Ideally, I'd rather have another 3 issues of Legion of X instead of this single too-fast-to-be-great wrap-up.

Also, big picture: This really should have been coordinated a little better with Immortal #11. Together, they imply an enormous shift in the balance of power on the Quiet Council, and that should really have been lampshaded in the later issue (Immortal).
more