• • Comic Book Reviews
• September 21, 2022

X-Terminators #1 Review

Written by: Leah Williams

Art by: Carlos Gomez

Coloring by: Bryan Valenza

Lettering by: VC’s Travis Lanham

Editing by: Lauren Amaro, Jordan D. White

X-Terminators has barely any scenes with my favorite superhero of all time, and yet it feels absolutely perfect. It’s one part raunchy comedy and another part grindhouse horror, two things I’m not into, and yet I enjoyed every minute of it. Usually, when thinking of a book that’s absolutely perfect for me, I think of something that hits everything I like. This one doesn’t hit anything I like on paper, yet I enjoyed everything about it. Its ability to sell me on its humor with funny jokes, dynamic set-pieces, humorous gore, and more says a lot about what it does right.

X-Terminators is not going to tie in to Judgement Day, and probably not anything else going on in the wider Marvel Universe, but feels very much like it’s a part of it. These are Marvel characters, who feel perfect as people and talk to each other in a way I wish they did all the time. They speak like actually good friends do. The way Jubilee and Boom-Boom talk shit to each other on one page made me step away because of all the giggling I was doing.

After all the dire pomp and circumstance of Judgment Day, it’s nice to read something in the opposite direction. The art also fits the tone and story perfectly. It would be really easy to grossly objectify the characters here like a grindhouse horror movie would but it doesn’t. It turns what is normally gross titillation, into funny one-panel gags right on the first page.

MINOR SPOILERS. The only thing I could complain about is that Wolverine (the best one), doesn’t show up until the end. To be honest, even though I read this for her, I forgot that she wasn’t here until the very end. That’s how good it was. When she was on the X-Men, I was always distracted by how underutilized she was. Now, I’m too busy wondering why Dazzler, Boom-Boom, and Jubilee haven’t hung out before!

You know, now that I think about it since when were the three of them even friends? I gotta research that.