In my effort to do more comic book reviews, I’m going to throw down with another of the big Event Comics coming out of Marvel this summer: X-Men: Schism. This will be my first time visiting X-Men Schism, and sadly I’ve found it to be lacking.

It’s a fun X-Men comic, but it’s utterly failing at its two main points: splitting up Cyclops and Wolverine and introducing some new villains.

X-Men: Schism is essentially the prologue to the next big X-franchise reboot this fall. For years now, the X-Men have been hanging out and doing their thing on the West Coast. They abandoned the classic X-Mansion in Westchester and moved out to their own private island off the coast of San Francisco, then named it Utopia. The X-Men claim they’re their own sovereign nation; whatever. The point is, all the mutants are now living on Utopia with Cyclops leading the X-Men. They’ve been nice and comfortable for years, fighting baddies and doing superhero stuff.

So now it’s time to break them up, it seems.

Zappy, zappy! Slashy, slashy!

The main thrust of this story is supposed to be that some dangerous something or other has come along that’s going to drive a wedge between Cyclops and Wolverine. They’ve never really gotten along, but for decades now they’ve been respectable pals. They trust each other, fight alongside each other and can count on each other. Well the new X-franchise reboot is going to involve a split where each one takes one half of the team and forms their own X-Men. So how do we get to that position?

By issue #3 of the 5-part Schism, I’m not really sure. Absolutely nothing that’s happened so far has convinced me at all that we’re heading to a monumental split of the X-Men, or even a minor split between Cyclops and Wolverine. Writher Jason Aaron is basically feeding us a few minor squabbles so far that I guess are going to lead to the bigger split between the two. But there’s just so much history and friendship between Cyclops and Wolverine that even they seem to acknowledge that getting at each other’s throats is silly.

And this is only issue #3

The story itself is actually fairly cool, and would make a good X-Men story. With mutants gathering power on Utopia, Cyclops and Wolverine attended a world conference about peace and security in issue #1. Cyclops gave a good speech and argued a bit with some jerkly diplomats. Then an evil mutant punk crashed the party and used his telepathy to start making all the diplomats admit their darkest secrets in front of the TV cameras. It’s a minor terroristic prank from a third-rate character – but it pisses everybody off. All around the world these diplomats are calling on their countries to bring their old Sentinel robots out of storage to once again defend themselves against mutants.

That’s a good idea, and I’m enjoying that part of the story. Under Cyclops’ leadership, the X-Men step up and start taking down these idiots and their mutant-killing machines.

Then the evil mutant punk asks for asylum on Utopia, and Cyclops gives it to him FOR SOME REASON! Cyclops’ decision to protect the jerk-whistle who started this mess makes very little sense. Sure there’s the sense of protecting a fellow mutant, but since when has that been an option? Whenever the X-Men beat up evil mutants in the past, they didn’t take those guys under their wings to protect them. It’s a decision that seems forced just to cause a riff with Wolverine, since Wolvie wants to turn the punk over to the proper authorities.

I’m really getting the sense that Cyclops is supposed to be in the wrong here. Because the next little squabble comes in issue #3. One of the young student characters, Idie, is out in the city with some other X-Men when the bad guys attack (more on them later). Idie is a scared teenage girl, and she’s hiding. When she’s the last X-Man standing, she’s able to get on the radio to the others. Wolverine tells her to stay hidden and not do anything. Cyclops tells her to do what she must to save everybody in the building.

So Idie saves people!

When Cyclops and Wolverine finally make it to the scene, Wolverine is pissed that Cyclops had the girl attack and kill the bad guys. Cyclops’ exact orders were ‘You do what you feel you have to’. He didn’t order Idie to kill anybody. She decided to be a hero, be an X-Man and stepped up and saved the day. Everybody made it out of the building before the ‘bomb’ went off, thanks to Idie! But Wolverine is pissed that Cyclops would put her in that situation.

Frankly, Idie is annoying the ever-loving Hell out of me. I know very little about the character. She’s brand new and is featured in a book I don’t read. What little I do know is that she’s from some African village (I think) and was mistreated because she’s a mutant. But so far in Schism, she’s written like a 4-year-old who hates herself. So seeing her do something heroic is only a good thing. As if the teenage X-Men have never gotten their hands dirty. Hell, why’d she even have to kill those guys? Haven’t the X-Men been training her how to use her powers?

Between the evil mutant punk and Idie, the writer seems to be forcing little squabbles down our throats as to why Cyclops and Wolverine will come to blows in the last two issues of this mini-series. But I’m just not buying it. Nothing has happened so far, and there’s no indication that anything will happen, that’s monumental enough to split these two friends and then split the entire X-Men into picking one side of the other.

Especially not the villains.

The Sentinels are not the villains of Schism. Instead, the writer introduces us to Kade Kilgore, a psychotic pre-teen kid who’s taken over the Hellfire Club and is attacking the X-Men for reasons that are not yet clear. I could not be more disappointed in this one-note, implausible, ridiculously over-the-top villain. It’s like the writer said, “Okay, so get this, the bad guys is going to be…a psycho kid!” and then stopped right there.

We meet Kilgore in issue #1 when he kills his father.

And they're in a flying car for some reason...

And since that one moment, we have learned nothing new about this kid or his motivations. Why does he want to kill his father and take over his company? Why is anybody letting him do it? Why does he want to go after the X-Men? No freakin’ clue!

What’s worse is that in issue #2, he’s joined by three other psycho kids who’ve also apparently killed their parents to take over their respective companies. Nobody in the business world is stopping them. Nobody seems to question that they’re now taking orders from clearly homicidal children. It just is. And that’s hair-pullingly idiotic.

First of all, they’re not even written like kids. They’re more like short adults. All four of them (with the exception of the girl who’s playing the ‘loopey’ psychotic maniac) speak and think with complete maturity and intelligence. That completely undoes the reason for them to be kids. Now they’re only kids because it’s crazier, or something to that effect. Like, wouldn’t it be crazy if they were all psycho kids? Yes, it would be crazy, but it wouldn’t make any sense.

Second of all, these kids are super-powerful. Not personally, mind you, but they seem to be unstoppable in a ridiculous way. For some reason, they’ve taken over the Hellfire Club. The idea of a purely human Hellfire Club, one that has turned away from its former mutant masters, is a good idea. But who the hell on the Hellfire Club thinks it’s a good idea to start taking orders from these insane children? Whatever, so the Hellfire Club gives the kids a couple of goon squads and they attack the opening of the new Mutant History Museum in San Francisco.

This is the building where Idie was earlier. She’s joined by her classmates, and then the X-Men Emma Frost, Colossus, Iceman, Magneto and Namor. This is a pretty big team of heavy-hitters for the X-Men. Yet when the kids attack, they and their random Hellfire goons are able to take each of the X-Men out in essentially one hit! That’s all it takes. Hell, both Magneto and Namor each have an exact same moment where they take all the time in the world to introduce themselves, give the evil children a moment to explain the fancy gun they have and then the kids use the gun to take out Magneto and Namor. And these guns are ridiculous. The gun to take down Namor shoots out heat pads on the ground, dehydrating the undersea king. The gun that takes down Magneto shoots miniaturized neutron stars, or super magnets. WHAT!? These kids have a gun that shoots miniaturized FREAKIN’ stars?

Again, ridiculous! These kids and their weaponry are just too over the top to take seriously.

Now let me stop here for a moment and say ‘yes, this is comics’. These sorts of weapons and villains are awesome in their ridiculous nature. In the world of comic books, of course such a gun is awesome and children as bad guys are cool. But they don’t fit in this mini-series.

This is a serious, down-to-Earth, grounded tale of how Cyclops and Wolverine come to blows and how it splits the X-Men. Everything so far has been very realistic in nature. They went to a peace summit, they’re attending a museum opening. They’re questioning matters of politics. And then in come these ridiculous, over-the-top villains that just clash with the nature of the story. The children villains are so one-dimensional as to be groan-inducingly boring. We don’t even know why they’re doing all of this or why they’re specifically going after the X-Men. And they seem to be able to pull whatever sort of magic weaponry they want out of their asses with the specific purpose of defeating the X-Men in ‘one punch’.

And I haven’t even mentioned the space slugs.

X-Men: Schism has been disappointing so far because it’s failing at its two main points: splitting up Cyclops and Wolverine and introducing the new villains. Nothing these evil, one-dimensional brats have done so far would convince me that the X-Men are going to split up and go their separate ways.

But other than that, the mini-series has been good. Jason Aaron writes a strong team with great personality. The idea that the X-Men have to clean up when all the world starts digging out their old Sentinels is a cool one. And I like the idea of the X-Men doing something global like attending  a peace summit.

And the art has been fantastic. There’s been a different artist for each issue so far, and they’ve all been brilliant.

Except in issue #2 when Cyclops looked anorexic…