X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 Review: A Mixed Bag of Mystery and Machination
The Hellfire Gala, one of the proudest and most commercially successful traditions of the Krakoan age, is one of the few aspects of that era to manage to cling on through last years Hellfire Vigil and now this years X-Men: The Hellfire Murder, both titles fittingly more morbid than the celebrations that came before. This year’s Hellfire Murder brings all the factions of Mutants together under the roof of longtime Hellfire Black King, Sebastian Shaw, as he promises to discuss a “matter of great import to mutantkind” while throwing a masquerade ball. The masquerade itself is a great twist on the Gala theme, and we get a beautiful selection of outfits all designed by Luciano Vecchio. Fashion was always a key part of the Hellfire Gala and Vecchio kills it on the stunning 19th Century-styled Masquerade outfits.
The story itself is split between 5 writers, Jed McKay (X-Men), Gail Simone (Uncanny X-Men), Erica Shultz (Generation X-23), Eve Ewing (X-Men United), and, taking the lead, Saladin Ahmed (Wolverine). Ahmed focuses on the main narrative, largely led by Wolverine, while McKay, Simone, and Ewing work with their books main cast, and Shultz take Ransom and Temper, the budding romance between the two X-Teams. The art is split between Joelle Jones, Luciano Vecchio, Aaron Kuder, Tony S Daniels, Federica Mancin and Cory Smith, each taking between 5-10 pages, and all coloured by Fer Sifuentes-Sujo who deserves incredible credit for making this issue as cohesive as it is with 6 different art styles, making each feel unique but never ruining the flow of the book. Changing artists mid issue can be very jarring, so it takes skill to have a book switching sometimes as frequently as each page and never once feel abrupt.
Ahmed seems to be responsible for the mystery itself here, which is a mixed success. He writes a good Wolverine here, functioning pretty well as our issues detective. Comics and murder mysteries don’t tend to go very well together, not as a format issue, but that comics writers just aren’t very good at them. You need to balance two things with a murder mystery, hiding the killer so it isn’t obvious, but laying enough clues that your detective can reasonably solve it with it feeling rewarding and not contrived. In this regard, The Hellfire Murder falls somewhere in the middle, the actual mystery is a bit underwhelming but how it’s solved is satisfying enough, with some clear clues planted in ways that aren’t too in your face. The biggest issue lies less in the mystery and more in the murder itself, which is both a boring and predictable victim, and a fairly unimaginative way for them to go. I’ll keep it spoiler-free here on who the victim actually is, but it was not someone who I really cared enough about to then care enough who killed them, something shared by most of the characters in the story, which certainly undercuts the event.
Truthfully the highlight of The Hellfire Murder isn’t the murder, but the actual Gala and the character interactions. While it’s hard to perfectly break it down as to who wrote what without consulting the credits back and forth, writers largely write the scenes with their own characters. Simone’s section is by far the worst and also least impactful, focusing on Rogue and Gambit, the now inseparable pair who cannot function apart for two seconds, who largely spend the issue doing their cutesy flirting that was fun the first few times, but quickly became annoying. Rogue shares a brief scene with Cyclops which comes off as self congratulatory for Simone as Cyclops commands Rogue on how she handled Graymalkin prison. The prison that was NOT shut down, but instead handed to Monet to run, something the supposed villain Sebastian Shaw criticises in his opening speech. Hard to say if that’s Ahmed airing a grievance or the X-Office telling us the X-Men running a prison is good, actually.
Shultz focuses on Ransom and Temper, the inter-X-Team couple, getting together for a little date at the gala. It’s sweet, but a little too brief to have any particularly strong opinions on it honestly. The highlight of the issue, in my opinion, is Jed McKay writing Cyclops and Psylocke, having a little dance as they plot a little murder of their own. Honestly, it’s not a pairing I would’ve thought of and Tony Daniels’ art is a bit more flirty than the actual dialogue (only a bit), but it’s a pretty hot scene. I love Greycrow and Jean, but honestly if McKay wants to push a little affair, I’m not complaining, especially with Jean not being present in the books at all right now. Eve Ewing has a few pages for Kitty and Emma too, but they seem to focus largely on the girls getting laid. Good for them I guess, but considering the cancellations and very split focus of X-Men United, I’d hope to see Ewing make better use of the page time she gets.
Ultimately it’s a bit unclear what The Hellfire Murder is for. McKay and Ahmed make fairly good arguments to read their books, so if this issue is designed to bring in new readers, it achieves that, but Simone’s pages don’t really feature the leads of that book and Shultz isn’t writing a book featuring Temper or Ransom. While it’s full of some future set up, it falls apart by being very unclear what for, whether it’s something related to the big event on the horizon, or in what book or even what year. On its own, it’s a fun enough issue, and worth reading as a fan of McKays X-Men, but feels largely inessential for now. Also on a personal note, with Betsy Braddock being rather prominent on the marketing I was very disappointed that she had one line and was basically irrelevant to the issue.
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