In anticipation of next month’s release of the X-Men: First Class film, Marvel is producing a set of “X-Men: Evolutions” variants on its May titles. This follows a month of “Thor Goes Hollywood” covers on books in April coinciding with the God of Thunder’s big screen debut and is part of a long line of variants timed with the release of movies featuring Marvel characters. The X-Men’s evolution themed covers feature individual characters highlighting design and costume changes they’ve undergone during their publication history.

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Last week saw the conclusion to DC Comics’ Brightest Day maxi-series that spilled out of the wildly popular Blackest Night story. Blackest Night was the culmination of years of Green Lantern stories by writer Geoff Johns, while Brightest Day turned the spotlight to other DC mainstays like Aquaman, Hawkman, Maritan Manhunter and Firestorm. The story was driven entirely by the recently discovered White Lantern Battery that represents life and is the opposite of the zombie generating Black Lantern Battery that plagued the cosmos during Blackest Night. Brightest Day is the latest in a line of year long maxi-series from DC that unfortunately couldn’t stick the landing. After seeing the run cut from 26 issues to 24 and the unexpected reintroduction of the Swamp Thing in issue #23, a shaky ending shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

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Mike Carey’s Age of X crossover running through X-Men: Legacy and New Mutants wrapped up today. Most of the pieces of the X-Men’s world seem to have been put back where they belong after being warped into a dark reflection of the Marvel Universe. The action in the concluding chapter is straightforward, but there are some tense moments where it’s unclear if anyone can save the mutants from the brink of destruction in a world where they’ve been hunted nearly to extinction. The fallout from what these characters have been through promises to be interesting going forward, but the resolution we see here is a satisfying end to a great story.

Spoilers for the issue and series will follow.

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Mike Carey’s wild ride through the Age of X is coming to a close at the end of the month, and Chapter Five (also known as X-Men: Legacy #247) was firing on all cylinders. We get a lot of answers, but it’s still unclear exactly how the mutants are going to set things right. At the end of this issue, Carey talks about his deliberate pacing of the series, and as far as I’m concerned he got it just right. Every issue has left me anxious to know more and this one is no exception. There’s a lot to like here, and these final issues have brought everything together to set the stage for a thrilling finale. So let’s get to it.

Spoilers for the issue and series will follow.

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I was looking forward to this book, but my level of enjoyment still took me by surprise. Writer Simon Spurrier did some great X-Men work recently on the Smoke and Blood one-shot during the Curse of the Mutants vampire event. That issue featured the X-Men’s science team (the X-Club) and as I really enjoy those characters I was predisposed to enjoying the story. It’s great to see Spurrier in this case taking more recognizable characters from the Marvel Universe that I’m not nearly as invested in and making me care about their plight. Seeing the Avengers as government sanctioned mutant hunter/killers is provocative on its own, but the twisted nature of the Age of X helps. It isn’t as simple as the characters we know being given a gruesome mission, in this case the characters entire histories are gruesome tales. The creative freedom to make these changes that Spurrier mentions in his comments at the end of the issue makes for a great read. I’ve actually grown to really enjoy those commentaries as they give a nice insight into both the creators and the book they’re working on.

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