X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 Is Fine But Never Quite Reaches the Level It Should (Review)

Being an X-Men fan in 2026 can honestly be kind of annoying. While the X-Men books aren’t as terrible as the biggest naysayers like to say they are, there’s also something missing in most of the line’s books – any kind of newness. Comics are a business of nostalgia, but that doesn’t mean that everything should be built around it, which is what the X-Men have been doing since Tom Brevoort took over editing the line. X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 is yet another example of this. The story itself plays off the idea of the Hellfire Galas from the dearly departed Krakoa Era, adding in a major X-Men death that turns the story into a whodunit.

Written by Saladin Ahmed, Gail Simone, Jed MacKay, Erica Schultz, and Eve Ewing, with art by Joelle Jones, Luciano Vecchio, Aaron Kuder, Tony S Daniel, Federica Mancin, and Cory Smith, the story itself is a perfectly serviceable yarn. However, it’s held back in numerous places by the writing of the issue. While it definitely captures the vibe of the old Hellfire Galas, it’s honestly kind of obvious that this is yet another example of nostalgia overcoming good storytelling.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Pros	Cons
The Hellfire Gala costumes look amazing	The story never really feels important because the stakes are non-existent until the end of the issue
The various artists’ different styles don’t clash, giving the book a surprisingly uniform visual identity	It’s not all that good of a detective story, which is a problem for a murder mystery book
There’s some decent characterization here that makes up for the boilerplate plot	Saladin Ahmed’s Wolverine continues to be the most bargain basement version of the character ever

Come For the Character Interactions, Tolerate the Blah Plot

This book combines most of the main writers of the X-Men books for a story that never really feels important. As far as the pros of the writing go, most of the character interactions are great; we get awesome scenes from Rogue and Cyclops, Temper and Ransom, Psylocke and Cyclops, Emma Frost and Namor, and several other mutants. However, that’s pretty much the only thing that can be considered a pro about the writing, because everything else is kind of blah. Don’t walk into this one expecting a Batman-level detective story; Saladin Ahmed handles all the Wolverine scenes and it’s basically just him monologuing as he just finds all of the clues without looking really. This honestly could have been a cooler part of the book, but Ahmed’s Logan is the most cliche version of the character, so it never really gets interesting. Ahmed also kind of botches Wolvie and Jubilee’s relationship in the book. It’s not bad, per say, but it kind of feels like it stepped out of 1993. The twist at the end works because of the characters’ involved, but is not really all that surprising, so it doesn’t really have any impact. Also, we only learn the reason behind the murder at the end of the book; it’s a strange choice to not give a story actual stakes at the end when everything is resolved. Ahmed’s Wolverine has been rather abysmal, mostly because of the writing, so giving him the reins of this one was kind of a mistake honestly.

All of that said, there are some great scenes in the book. Shaw’s opening speech is good, Rogue and Cyclops basically mock the early “X-Men vs. X-Men” idea in “From the Ashes”, Temper and Ransom’s relationship is a lot of fun for people who have been following them since they met. The actual reason for Cyclops and Psylocke to be at the Gala is the most Cyclops thing ever, while also paying homage to their long relationship with a cool moment that stepped out of 1993. Anything with Namor and Emma is cool as well. That’s kind of the problem with this book; it has its moments but they just serve to make you think how much better this comic could have been.

The Art Does a Lot of the Heavy Lifting In This Issue

Since this book has the main X-writers working on it, it makes sense to have some of the main artists on the book. Vecchio and Daniel draw Uncanny X-Men and X-Men respectively and Mancin has worked on Exceptional X-Men and Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant, with Jones, Kuder, and Smith being the only one who didn’t recently draw an X-Men comics. Luckily the artists understand their assignment and give readers some awesome pages. It all starts with the Gala costumes. These were an important part of the Krakoa Era parties, and I honestly like these better than the older ones. Those were high fashion and didn’t really strike my personal fancy; these are more masquerade-type costumes and have a more interesting feel to them for me. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but they are outstanding costumes.

One of the problems with issues like this can be that artistic styles clash, hurting the book’s visual identity. However, this issue never suffers from that; their styles are similar enough where there’s not one of those moments where you turn the page and it looks like you’re in a completely different comic. There isn’t a lot of action in this book, but it lives and dies by the character acting, which is luckily exquisite. It can be very hard to capture emotion in costumes like this, but each of the artists is able to get across the emotional stakes of each scene beautifully.

X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 is yet another example of the X-Men office trying to play to nostalgia and falling on their face. The overall plot of the comic isn’t actually bad, but it barely focuses on it, robbing it any of stakes. The character stuff is good and keeps the story from being a complete waste of time, but other than that, it’s not a great comic. The Hellfire Galas were meant to be jumping on points and this book sort of does that, but it is also is kind of opaque to any fan who isn’t already reading the X-books. If you are, this book is fine but it makes a lot of mistakes that keep it from being interesting.

X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 is on sale now.

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