MRL - X-Men

X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (2008) #1 - Sean Kelley McKeever/Mike Mayhew

X-Men Origins: Cyclops (2010) #1 - Stuart Moore/Jesse Delperdang

Mythos: X-Men (2006) #1 - Paul Jenkins/Paolo Rivera

Two one-shots delving in backstory and a retelling of the first issue.

Jean Grey's telepathic powers first manifested when she witnessed the death of her best friend. She internalized her friend's feelings in a way that made it impossible to overcome the trauma on her own.

Enter Charles Xavier, who manages to reach Jean and help her control both her telepathy and her telekinesis. However, a real world test proves too much and Jean loses control.

Xavier believes the best course of action is to wall off Jean's traumatic memories and telepathy. This barrier will wear off with time and, hopefully, older Jean will be better equipped to deal with her powers. In this telling, Jean is fully aware of what's going on.

Feeling well-adjusted again - minus some ordinary teenage angst - Jean becomes a student at Xavier's school, grows up and accepts she's a mutant.

Cyclops one-shot also revolves around his relationship with Xavier. He start at some point in the future, where Xavier asks Scott to become the leader of the X-Men while he deals with some other issues. Then, there's a flashback to the plane crash that killed his parents. Apparently, there was only one parachute on board, so Scott jumps with his brother, while the plane is destroyed by the alien ship that was chasing them.

Scott is found by the army, but his brother disappears after Scott tells him to hide. Although he's been having weird headaches, his power only reveals itself years later, when Scott blows up the wall of his room. He runs away and into Xavier, who gifts him his visor and promises to help him.

Fast forward to the firts time the X-Men confront Magneto and he takes the opportunity to monologue at Cyclops. According to Magneto, there's no right or wrong, only power, and, sooner or later, the mutants will dominate the Earth.

He wants Cyclops to join him, but he's not on board with Magneto's methods. Maybe the Professor's views are simplistic, maybe humans and mutants won't be able to live together, but that doesn't mean mutants should resort to terrorism.

And Magneto is an evil mutant anyway.

Flash forward to present day and Scott accepts leadership of the X-Men, but he'll do it in his own way.

Lastly, we have the Mythos retelling of X-Men #1, which follows the same basic plot, except that it takes a very strong “Magneto was right" stance. It starts with Magneto murdering three men accused of a anti-mutant hate crime.

He’s not attacking the army base for random villain-wants-to-take-over-the-world reasons, but to get proof the government is tracking down mutants, even though the Mutant Registration Act was struck down. He explains this to Xavier, who doesn’t take being wrong very well.

Frankly, I didn’t like this depiction of the conflict between Xavier and Magneto. Just because Xavier has a more optimistic view of the future of Human-Mutant relations, doesn’t mean he’s naive (or stupid). And just because Magneto is right about registration being the harbinger of worst stuff, it doesn’t mean that murder in cold blood is cool (even if the victims aren’t innocent). I think the conflict is more interesting if they’re in more equal footing - neither is 100% right or wrong, they’re just bringing different perspectives to an impossible situation.

In the end, I liked how Magneto was portrayed in the Cyclops one-shot the best.