The opening issue of the Schism arc starts off with a real mystery, a whole party of people is found naked and frozen to death on a glacier in Alaska. In step the X-Treme X-Men to help solve the case and see who was involved in this grisly event. This book also has the X-Treme debut of Emma Frost as the team make their return to the Xavier Institute.

First off this is not a Grant Morrisson style X-Men book, this is the classic X-Men, without the “down to earth” sales point of the New X-men books. To many readers this is a set-back; I however really like an old-style X-Men book. Having grown up reading Chris Claremont’s previous renditions of the X-Men, I find this a welcome continuation of his writing methods. This book may be a tad verbose for many readers; being a fan of text heavy books I really like this. After paying out $2.99/R 39.00 I expect to have something which hooks me into a story and that doesn’t take two minutes on average to get through. Claremont tends to “over-explain” his panels a bit, but this additional information adds too, rather than detracts from, any reading enjoyment.

The artwork is what drew me to this series a year or so ago. I had never seen any of Salvador Larroca’s work before this title and his original style blew me away. I didn’t really think much of the artwork on the other X-titles at the time and so this title quickly became a favourite. The major difference in art on the X-Treme title is that it is void of any inks, a process which a year and a half later has only just started to be seen outside of this book.

The colouring of the Liquid! Crew has been done straight onto the pencils; this creates a “painted” effect and really helps to enhance Larroca’s style. I recently picked up Ultimate Daredevil and Electra which Larroca pencilled, and you can see such a difference in terms of colouring techniques with his art, it really looks so much richer in X-Treme X-Men thanks to this irregular method of leaving out the inking stage.

A bonus item in this issue is the Avengers 65 preview of four full-colour pages. A great action scene with stunning visuals help to sell this book. The artwork of Oliver Coipel looks very nice and reminds me of some of the recent work in The Ultimates by Bryan Hitch. A life-like style of art with rich and vivid colouring. The story gets you hooked within the short space of this four page preview and makes you want to read more. A good job, not too many previews stand out these days, this one did.

In conclusion this is a great X-Men book, unfortunately due to bad publicity I don’t think it gets too many looks. With an original art style and some intensive reading this is a great buy. My favourite X-title right now.