Marvel’s new X-Men event puts a fresh, tantalizing spin on familiar Wolverine SNIKT

polygon.com:

Just like the blockbuster series House of X/Powers of X, Marvel’s latest event really has two first installments. The 12 issues of X Lives of Wolverine and X Deaths of Wolverine — the springboard that promises to launch the next set of X-Men titles — are really two intertwining six-issue series. So we’re reviewing them both at the same time!

Unlike HoXPoX, however, XLXD is not a complete break with the previous status quo. X Lives of Wolverine #1 could have easily passed as just another issue of X-Force or Wolverine. It’s an odd way to kick things off. But X Deaths of Wolverine #1 indicates that its creative team knows how to introduce something familiar and something new at the same time.

Both X Lives and X Deaths are scripted by Benjamin Percy, best known to comics readers for the most recent volumes of X-Force and Wolverine. Also an essayist and novelist (most recently of The Unfamiliar Garden), Percy has brought a prose sensibility to the Dawn of X and Reign of X lines of comics. Joining him are artist Joshua Cassara, the regular artist for X-Force, on Lives — and artist Federico Vincentini, fresh off of drawing the last volume of Amazing Spider-Man, on Deaths. Tom Muller, credited for “Design” on all X-Men titles, is aboard, as well as letterer Cory Petit and colorists Frank Martin and Dijjo Lima.

Like HoXPoX, XLXD is a story about the distant past and the far-flung future, told through the experiences of a mutant who has lived many lives. This time, however, our focal point is Wolverine rather than Moira MacTaggert, so the story is not one of science and experiments, but of bone-slicing violence. In X Lives of Wolverine #1, Wolverine’s consciousness is projected into the past to protect Charles Xavier from a