The X-Files: Conspiracy #1
Written by: Paul Crilley
Art by: John Stanisci
Colored by: Steven Downer
Lettered by: Chris Mowry
Published by: IDW
Cover Price: $3.99
Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!
This is one of the most inspired crossovers ever. Mulder and Scully’s work on the X-Files have brought them into contact with the alien, the weird, and the supernatural. So it makes sense that they would be particularly curious about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Transformers, the Crow, and the Ghostbusters. It’s definitely a bit of a concession to believe that these franchises all take place on the same world, but I am willing to go along with it in the promise of a real fun crossover.
Summary (contains spoilers): This comic starts off at the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland. A narrator talks about a hypothetical particle called the Higgs Singlet that would be able to move outside of the normal bounds of time. All the particle would need is something to tell it when to re-enter normal space time. An unknown person at Cern sends a encrypted email to the Lone Gunmen. As they decrypt the info, they find information about a company named Skylogic and a lethal virus. There is also headlines talking about the Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Transformers:
What’s particularly interesting about all these files is that they are all dated in the future. The Gunmen try to run a search on Skylogic, but the company seems to have erased their digital footprint entirely.
Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully are investigated a case in Virginia. There are 42 victums, dead of some time of strange virus that seems to have caused metal spikes to grow out from their body and kill them. The Lone Gunmen arrive on the scene to tell them about the email. Mulder thinks it is a hoax, until he sees an image of the lethal virus and it matches the bodies they were investigating. Mulder tells the Gunmen to keep decrypting the files.
As the Gunmen drive off, their search for info on Skylogic has brought the attention of an armed man and woman in black suits. They open fire on the Gunmen at a gas station, and car chase ensues. The Gunmen manage to get away, but the man and woman seem determined to get rid of the “loose ends.”
Scully continues to investigate the virus, and she is certain that it was genetically modified. In order to create a cure, she is going to need a sample of the original DNA that this virus was built on.
The Gunmen call Mulder to tell them about the Skylogic assailants. They also decide to start their investigation by talking to the Ghostbusters. Moments later, they decrypt another file from the future which says the virus has killed over 2 million people and is now a pandemic.
Review: Just a head’s up. If you come into this issue looking for the Transformers, Crow, Ghostbusters, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you will be very disappointed. This issue is pretty much all X-Files, especially focusing on the Lone Gunmen. Each of the other franchise will be getting their own individual crossover issue, so there should be plenty of time for each of them to encounter the X-Files crew, but it doesn’t happen here. That actually doesn’t take away from the quality of this comic, but I do like readers knowing what they are in for.
The Lone Gunmen were written perfectly in this issue. I don’t know Paul Crilley’s work all that well, but he seemed to find their voices real well, and the humor in this issue was really well done. I loved that the Lone Gunmen have gotten into the “Maxim” business to try and get the truth to the masses by hiding it next to pictures of hot women in bikinis:
I also thought it was great when someone refers to the Lone Gunmen by saying “I think one of them was a woman” (poor Langley).
Even outside of the humor, there was a real compelling story here. Emails from the future warning of a real unique pandemic, car chases, and mysterious corporations involved in dangerous shenanigans. Pretty much everything you want from an X-Files story! And next issue, we get the Ghostbusters!
My biggest concern about this issue is the art was very inconsistent. Sometime the characters looked spot on:
And then ON THE SAME PAGE, they look like deformed monsters:
The action scenes looked great, and the crime scene shot was brutal but real well drawn:
But every time the action slowed down, the art for this comic became hit or miss, and that really dragged my score down. I would give the writing a solid 8.5 or 9 out of 10, and the art was closer to a 6.0 or 6.5.
Overall, a great story with great characterization, but the art could have been much better. The sad part is the artist did some great panels in this book, so it’s clear that the art on this book COULD have been great, but it falls short too many times. Not sure if it was a deadline crunch, but the end result took away from my enjoyment of the issue. But, I definitely will be checking out the rest of this crossover. There were a lot of great ideas here, and I hope that IDW can pull them all together into something memorable.
Final Score: 7.5: Really good start to this crossover, but inconsistent art really hurt this one.
