X-Men: Schism #1 by Jason Aaron and Carlos Pacheco

Aside from Spider-Man, the X-Men have always been my favorite superheroes. I’ve read a good chunk of every major era of X-Men since it began. Like most everyone, Chris Claremont’s decade and a half long reign on the franchise contains most of my favorite storylines.

I started reading comics regularly (through friends) around 2001 (I began buying them myself around 2003), and it was a great time to love X-Men. Grant Morrison had just begun his (in my view) brilliant run on New X-Men and Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Statix was also starting up (that book is an underrated classic—go pick up the trades). After Morrison left Marvel and X-Statix ended, Joss Whedon started Astonishing X-Men, another great series which kept me satisfied for another couple years.

Since then, though, the X-franchise has languished with very good writers like Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction turning in very mediocre runs on Uncanny X-Men. Fraction left the book a few months ago to Kieron Gillen, who has done quite a respectable job in his five issues so far.

This book, X-Men: Schism, is a mini-series written by Jason Aaron (creator of Scalped from Vertigo), dealing with a disagreement between Cyclops and Wolverine which will lead to a division within the team.

The first issue really brings that classic Claremont vibe (obviously written in a more modern style). There’s sentinels, the Hellfire Club, and even some school stuff, all of which have been sorely missing these past few years. The only thing missing is Xavier, but he’s in most of the promo art for this series, so I’m sure he’ll show up soon.

As a lifelong X-Men fan who often forgets why he’s an X-Men fan, Schism served as a great reminder of X-Men at it’s best: big action, light political intrigue, and excellent soap opera.