Written by Andrea Speed

No one worry – I haven’t taken over columns too. Craig needed a break, and I needed to gab, so it was a win-win situation. Look forward to his return next week.

This column is usually devoted to titles put out by smaller, lesser known labels, but just about any series worthy of the attention qualifies. And this one deserves all the attention it can get.

District X is a Marvel book, and one that sprung out of the Marvel “Reload” event, so it doesn’t appear to need any promotion. But it does, because I fear something of this high a quality can easily get lumped in with the rest of the X books and disappear, which is not where it belongs.

Although promoted as a series for Bishop, that turned out not to be entirely accurate, which should have been obvious in the first issue, where Bishop didn’t show up until the very last page. This is not a solo series for the character at all; he is simply one of the ensemble cast that make up a dark, intriguing, insidiously complex urban crime drama, where mutations add not just a new wrinkle to common problems and situations, but special personal and social troubles all its own. It’s like Homicide (or any other good crime drama) but with mutants – and yet, that’s not accurate, as it makes it sound cheesy, which it isn’t. Writer David Hine is building, with great deliberation, a Mutant Town section of New York that has a level of realism that few other X books can claim, and works as a very subtle metaphor for the immigrant’s experience – please note that many of the main characters are from somewhere else, or have connections to another place (or, in Bishop’s case, another time). The mutants here don’t want to be heroes or villains; they don’t want to save the world, nor do they want to destroy it (normally). What they want is to have average, peaceful lives – lives often denied to them in the outside “normal” world, lives made harder by prejudice and fear. But where there are desperate people, there are people to exploit them, and just because you’re all mutants doesn’t mean there’s any code of loyalty. People are used and abused, live lives of quiet desperation that sometime become explosive, and the most minor things can set off a chain of events that end up catastrophic.

That’s one thing this series can claim that most can’t – nothing is wasted. There are no true throwaway situations or characters; most things are connected in occasionally unexpected ways, and characters that you thought were just there to make a plot point return with continuations of their personal sagas. In seven issues, Hine has built a multi-layered, realistic world, a self-contained, seedy universe where the incredible andthe mundane co-exist, where nothing is forgotten, and a single good deed can cause a disaster of epic proportions. Things are not broken down into simple black and white very often; District X is the epitome of the gray area, where good people can do bad things for the right reason, and where bad people can do good things for the wrong reason. This is an intelligent, gripping crime drama, something I never thought I’d say about even a vaguely connected X book.

This series has been far from perfect. Issue six, the conclusion of the first arc (“Mr. M”) was far too rushed and predictable, dipping into something closer to X territory even though you can understand the reaction of the character. Still, it was a let down after the brilliance that had come before. But it seems like it was a temporary blip, as issue seven bounced back with a strong, astute story … that is, funnily enough, still on the shelf, and would be a great place for new readers to come on board, even though all the stories weave into one another.

I can’t leave out the fantastic art of David Yardin, the usual pendiler, whose clean, detailed art is the perfect compliment to Hine’s script. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the series getting off to such animpressive start without him. Facial expressions are rendered with such clarity and delicacy you can see the hate in someone’s eyes, the fear and confusion, and no matter how odd the mutants may look, you can always see the underlying humanity, the thing that makes them no different from anyone else. The backgrounds are rich and lush, in spite of the fact that the District looks like a low rent district, oftentimes nothing more than a slum. It’s not film noir but neo-noir, where dark things are done in the light of day, and no less chilling for it. The bold inking of Alejandro Sicat and the strong coloring of Andy Troy bring it all to life.

Since it’s an ensemble, it would be difficult to list every single one, but I’ll cover the important ones.

Lucas Bishop – The most recognizable of the cast, Brought in when the federal authorities started to become concerned about the rising crime in the mutant district and the potential gang war between the two gangsters who basically controlled the District – “Filthy” Frankie Zapruder and Daniel “Shaky” Kaufman – he is teamed up with beat cop Ismael Ortega, who routinely patrols the district. He might be an X-Man from the future, but he is a slightly distant figure, doing his job well but struggling to adapt to this new personal dynamic.

Ismael “Izzy” Ortega – The true main character of this series, he is just a normal, every day beat cop, who hasn’t been on the job long enough to become jaded towards the people on his beat. An émigré fromCuba – his parents left the island for America in 1980, coincidentally the time of a great mutant purge – he’s clearly a good man, a compassionate police officer, a loving family man (married to a woman, Armena, who is in fact a mutant). But his decision to support and stand by his first partner, Gus Kucharsky, by lying about what really happened at the scene of a double murder, is a living example of good intentions paving the way to hell. His lie ultimately doesn’t save Gus in any way, but the knowledge of its existence and fear that it will come back to destroy him – and that he did the wrong thing – is eating away at him. The strain is just beginning to show on his marriage.

Absolon Mercator a/k/a Mr. M – A man who lives simply and quietly in the district, he basically keeps his own company, and his only friend seems to be his downstairs neighbor, Hannah Levy, who often brings him appliances to repair when they stop working. What she eventually learns that he is originally from Belgium, having been sent to America by his parents after a single , devastating childhood incident involving his overwhelming powers. After witnessing the shooting involving Gus and Izzy, Absolon decides to finally get involved in life again, and tries to do good deeds, but confronting Gus and saving a boy’s life both have unintended, disastrous consequences that challenge his sanity. And because of his astounding powers, endangers everyone else in the process.

”Filthy” Frankie Zapruder – One of the warring mob bosses in Mutant Town, his mutation is an odd one: he generates smells based on his mood. So when he’s happy, he smells good, but when he’s upset … well, please note all his lieutenants pinching their noses shut and trying to stand downwind from him. He brought the drug-like excretions of the Toad Boy to market initially.

Daniel “Shaky” Kaufman – The other mobster in the district, but one with a more ruthless edge than Filthy Frankie, as well as a more unsettling mutation. He has an “erratic metabolism”, so he builds up a great deal of energy that he usually releases as fits of extreme violence, usually on his right hand man, Mr. Punch (a large mutant born without pain receptors, so taking regular beatings from Shaky doesn’t seem to phase him). But now that Mr. Punch is gone, and it looks like Kaufman may be loose again, where is he going to expend that energy? Shaky had the Toad Boy kidnapped out from under Filthy Frankie, and his people’s slightly inept collection of the Toad Boy’s excretions led to tragedy.

Jazz – Blue skinned, low rent hustler, he worked initially for Filthy Frankie, but when threatened by Shaky collapsed like a house of cards. He was forced to deal the new Toad Tabs by Shaky, but he screwed up that job quickly, a situation made infinitely worse by the intervention of Mr. M. His current loyalty remains unclear, but wherever he is, trouble inevitably follows.
The things is, I could go on, as I haven’t mentioned Armena, or the merwoman Patricia, or former Kaufman associate Lonnie, And even though it does seem like it has a large cast, no one gets shortshrifted, and it’s never confusing or jumbled. Even nameless characters appear again and again in the background, recurring extras who occasionally get lines and maybe down the road stories all their own. Issue seven is in the shops, issue eight will be out in December, and the first District X trade, Mr. M, will be in shops in January.

If you avoided this series because you hate Bishop or just hate X books, you shouldn’t, as this series isn’t like any X book on the shelves. Basically, it’s too good to be an X book. Just when you thought every angle on mutants had been covered ad nauseum, this one shows there can be new life in the old allegory in the hands of a talented writer. This is the best new series to come out of Marvel in a long time, and it deserves special recognition just for that.

Credits:

Writer: David Hine
Pencilers: David Yardin; Mike Perkins; Lan Medina
Inkers: Alejandro “Boy” Sicat; Drew Hennessy
Colorists: Avalon’s Andy Troy; Avalon’s Dan Kemp & David Kemp; Digital Rainbow
Letters: Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne ; Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Rob Steen
Editor: Mike Marts
Assistant Editors: Sean Ryan & Stephanie Moore
Covers: Steve McNiven; Tom Raney

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