Giant Size House of M #1 Never Feels Like It Comes Together (Review)

Ms. Marvel‘s introduction to the X-Men in the Krakoa Era has been one of the more controversial decisions in the character’s history. Ms. Marvel was once one of the most popular new heroes of the ’10s, but that has faded over the years. Making her a mutant seems like it was Marvel’s big plan to bring her back to prominence, but so far it hasn’t really stuck yet. NYX, the Ms. Marvel co-starring young mutants book, was cancelled and the next salvo in making Ms. Marvel an important mutant has been the Giant-Size series of X-Men books, taking Kamala Khan on a time-traveling jaunt in order to stop the plans of Legion. Giant-Size House of M #1 is the penultimate chapter in this story, and while it ticks all of the boxes, the story never really takes off.

House of M wasn’t the best choice for the Giant-Size event for multiple reasons. House of M was one of the slowest paced Marvel events of the last couple of decade, which is kind of ironic since there’s not a lot of story in the book, and Giant-Size House of M show off just how anemic House of M was as a story. There’s not really much going on this book. Kamala starts out in the House of M universe where she meets Kitty Pryde, who was working as a school teacher in the House of M reality, and is there when Wolverine and Layla Miller find her. Each issue of Giant-Size so far has focused on Kamala talking to one of the female X-Men, so this part of the issue serves to set that up. We get Scarlet Witch’s utterance of “No More Mutants”, and then its back to the old world to figure out what Legion’s plan is. The Giant-Size chapters have proven to be pretty formulaic so far, and this issue is no different.

A lot of Ms. Marvel fans are annoyed about the way that different mutants have talked down to Kamala about dealing with anti-mutant racism; she’s a character whose Pakistani heritage means that she would have been experiencing racism her entire life. This issue actually has Kamala talk about her experience with that kind of thing, which is a breath of fresh air compared to other Ms. Marvel interactions with mutants. When this story was announced, a lot of people wondered how going to the House of M reality would fit into Legion’s master plan, and this issue makes it all make sense, which is nice. However, much like the original House of M, this issue is sort of lackluster. There’s very little action to speak of and the issue isn’t able to use the drama of House of M to make the story more interesting, so readers are left with a story that never really feels likes its sum of its parts. The Revelations back-up story from the Wolverine team of Saladin Ahmed and Martin Coccolo is fine, but, much like their run on Wolverine, it is kind of lackluster.

Francesco Manna’s art has something of a Mahmud Asrar feel to it — seriously, if you didn’t read the credits page, you’d think that Asrar was drawing the book — and that’s a good thing. Manna’s character acting really digs into what little emotion there is in the story and brings it to the fore. The pages are well laid out and detailed, and the fight at Castle Magnus, first between Legion and Scarlet Witch and then showing the scenes from the big battle at the end of House of M, is the highlight of the issue’s art.

Manna’s character acting is the best part of the conversation between Kamala and Kitty Pryde. It brings their little exchange to life, and it becomes one of the most vital parts of the story thanks to the pencils. In fact, Manna generally does a great job of conveying the feelings of the X-Men before and after M-Day. There’s few pages of reactions that really capture the hopelessness of the situation for mutants. There’s a bit of a joke about Beast having a time machine at the end of the story that works really well because of Manna’s skill with faces.

Giant-Size House of M #1 never reaches the height that the story reached in Giant-Size Dark Phoenix Saga and Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse, but it’s not a bad comic. It’s nice that Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing remembered that Ms. Marvel has experienced racism before she learned that she was a mutant, which is something that a lot of Ms. Marvel writers have seemed to forget over the years. However, much like House of M before it, this is a very anemic story, and the lack of plot hurts it in the long run.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Giant-Size House of M #1 is on sale now.

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