X-Men Black: Mojo #1 Review

Stupid. It is a very simple word that means so very much and sometimes it just says it all.

X-Men Black: Mojo #1 is stupid.

In case you don’t follow the X-Men, Mojo is a grotesque alien ruler who has enslaved his subjects by using the television programs he produces, which are mostly Running Man, American Gladiators broadcasts.

You would be wrong.

In its place, we get a preposterous, brainless, frankly embarrassing story in which a love-smitten Mojo slums around a coffee shop behaving like a total milksop, pathetic loser because he is enamoured with a woman who is probably just there to sponge off the free Wi-Fi.

Mojo, disguised in a fedora and trench coat like The Thing, keeps striking out until mutant hero Glob offers to be his wingman. The unamusing story turns into one big silly therapy session in which Mojo is taught the error of his ways.

Like the Grinch, Mojo’s heart has grown three sizes so he turns off his cameras, rescues a little girl and helps a inane X-Men team made up of Fake Wolverine, Mukus and Rockslide, defeat another…Yawn!…Sentinel, Mojo’s lackey sent to wipe the muties out on his master’s behalf.

For what is supposed to be a special event, you would think the creators would deliver an epic story that possibly comments on binge watching or the state of the media in the United States today. Not some trite, cutesy sludge that – like so many comic book stories today – are transparently inspired by Friends and other nineties television sitcoms.

This is where Aukerman and editor Jordan D. White just don’t get it. By White’s miserable track record at Marvel, he probably never will. We don’t want imbecilic sitcom silliness. We want Avengers: Infinity War not Friends. We want The Dark Knight not Cheers. We want Black Panther not Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Mad About You or any variation of the nineties sitcoms you grew up with.

If you took your fingers out of your ears for once and put them on the pulse of the comic book readership, you probably would have a much more successful brand and catalogue of books on your hands.

How in the world did Jordan D. White greenlight this absurd rubbish? Who in the world is its target market?

X-Men Black : Mojo #1 is one of the worst comic books I have read in the last 10 years. The comic book industry would be better served if all of the issues of X-Men Black : Mojo #1 were recycled into products that actually serve an adequate purpose, like greeting cards which would contain far better writing, or toilet paper which is perhaps the best use imaginable for each and every page of X-Men Black : Mojo #1.

The only saving grace, the only positive thing to say about the book is the artwork by Nick Bradshaw and André Lima Araújo is quite good, although there are far too many flat angles or perspectives for my liking. If it weren’t for their work it would have gotten an abysmal rating from me.

The fact that this comic made it to publication at all epitomizes why Marvel Comics is exactly like the bewildered researchers in The Thing. They are just blindly stumbling around in an Antarctic blizzard without the faintest clue as to where the right path is.

Just stupid. Just plain stupid.