I want to believe. I wanted to believe? Well, whatever it is, I no longer believe. Being a dedicated fan of The X-Files original run, I was wounded by the last two years of the show, and even more disgusted by the movies. When IDW decided to launch The X-Files Season 10, I was mildly curious. It involved Scully and Mulder and it was supposed to pick up where season 9 ended, which would be wonderful since season 9 ended horribly. I picked the issue up and sat down, mind open, ready to believe.
X-Files Season 10 begins several years after the series ended. Scully and Mulder have gone into hiding. Using the name Blake, they have taken up suburban life in hopes of escaping their supernatural past. Scully works at a clinic, and Mulder does, well, something, though we’re not entirely sure what. Season 10 #1 sets off alarm bells from the first page. Scully is being chased by a group of men wearing cloaks and sporting glowing eyes. As the former agent tries desperately to get help, she is soon overcome by the cloaked figures.
Jumping back to earlier in the day, issue #1 sets up the normal lives of Scully and Mulder. That is, until Skinner shows up with a warning. Somebody has hacked into the FBI database, specifically looking in the archive files. The digital fingerprints allude to someone trying to find the relocated X-Files agents. Mulder is skeptical, Scully concerned. Skinner leaves, and the issue drops a bomb on us. The child Scully had in the series has been put up for adoption. Fearing this new X-Files interest could lead to their child, Scully wants to find and warn the parents. Mulder thinks she’s worrying for nothing. Naturally, he’s wrong, and the rest of the issue is the cloaked bright-eyes group attacking Skinner and then, as shown in the opening pages, Scully.
It’s hard to say if the story, penned by writer Joe Harris from a story he crafted with X-Files creator Chris Carter, will turn out to be any good. The kick off issue is a snoozer. Harris tries desperately to write “Mulder”-sounding dialog – a combination of optimism, pessimism and sarcasm – but fails miserably. There’s no juice here, nothing to goose the reader into being excited. Glowing guys with capes is nothing to crow about. This also relies heavily on you being familiar with the X-Files folklore, which seems like a bad idea for a new series.
Not helping matters is the atrocious art from Michael Walsh. Once again, IDW saves a few pennies by giving us sloppy, rushed and badly put together art. Scully looks like somebody smashed her face with a pan, and Mulder looks about as much like Mulder as I do. Lazy shadowing is used to give the art a bit of noir heaviness, but to no avail. I don’t know why IDW refuses to invest in solid artists but, that being their game, pretty much everything they put out looks awful. X-Files Season 10 #1 is no exception.
(2 Story, 1 Art)
