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Title: X-Men: Messiah Complex
Author(s): Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey, Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Peter David
Artist(s): Marc Silvestri, Billy Tan, Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Scot Eaton
ISBN: 0785128999
Format: Hard Cover
Page Count: 352
Overall Concept 9
Execution 9
Art 6

This was the story that brought me back to the X-men and I'm quite glad it did.

Essentially, the story of Messiah Complex is that very recently the mutants of the Marvel Universe had a serious setback, they went from being perhaps millions strong to being only several hundred. Also, it has been assumed that no more mutant births could or would happen. This story begins with this theory being proven wrong. The first mutant birth occurs, and unlike all previous mutants, that don't show their powers until the onset of puberty, this mutant is born fully 'active' and strong enough to fry Cerebro (the computer that is capable of detecting mutants anywhere in the world) and knock all telepaths on their butts for a few hours.

The story goes on to tell the tale of the various forces that are trying to locate this baby; The Purifiers, a racist quasi-religious zealot group, who lay the baby's birthplace to waste trying to destroy it, the Marauders, the evil version of the X-men, who want to corrupt the baby to evil, the X-men who wish to protect it from those that mean it harm, the genetic beast who wants to literally consume the child, Cable the time travelling lone mutant who is willing to do most anything to keep it out of all harms way and the traitor in the midst of the X-men who will do what they need to in order to see the baby dead.

The story has lots of great elements; treachery, betrayal, compassion, time travel, and intrigue. The part that makes this all so great is that despite being told by five different authors and across the five different X-titles, the story comes across with one voice and no major glitches seem to occur (something being told out of sequence).

The same cannot be said for the art, as the five artists are all very unique in their styles and this can be rather jarring for the storyline. The end of one book shows the characters as drawn one way and the beginning of the next is very, very different. And as I stated much earlier in this post, I'm very much not a fan of Chris Bachalo or Humberto Ramos, who each drew two issues in this 13 issue series.

All in all, this is an excellent series as it touches on all the major, and several minor, mutant characters and in ways that will have great impact on the future events of the mutants of the Marvel Universe. The story is very self contained, but has many elements that can be continued in the various X-titles in the years to come.

I would heartily recommend this 13 issue series to not only X-fans or comics fans, but also to anyone, as this is a great jumping on point for the X-titles of the Marvel Universe. And with it representing each of the 5 titles, it lets a reader choose which of those series they will decide to continue reading, should they decide to.