Exiliados, Vol. 1: La Prueba del Tiempo

Exiles (2018)

by Saladin Ahmed (Writer), Javier Rodriguez

Exiles v3, 1-5 USA

¡La vuelta de uno de los equipos de culto de los 2000! El grupo de Destello no sólo tiene por misión salvar el mundo, sino el Multiverso al completo. Ahora, son más necesitados que nunca. Prepárate para una de las series más originales de la temporada.

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, X Men, Comic Book, Science Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2018

About the author

Saladin Ahmed was born in Detroit and raised in a working-class, Arab American enclave in Dearborn, MI.

His short stories have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards, and have appeared in Year's Best Fantasy and numerous other magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, as well as being translated into five foreign languages. He is represented by Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON is his first novel.

Saladin lives near Detroit with his wife and twin children.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this has over the top nods to diversity, great continuity game and some interesting characters; if only they had a more original storyline than the exact same one as the original Exiles - you know, heroes assembled to save the Multiverse. Well that arc is completed here, and the next (Wild West!) arc looks promising. 6 out of 12.

2019 read

[James DeSantis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool idea but bad exacution. I liked the idea of all these characters coming together, and wolvie is super cute, but the art goes down the longer the series goes and the writing feels the need to explain to you everything instead of showing. Overall a boring attempt on interesting ideas.

[Jesús De la Jara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leí este cómic sobre todo por la aparición de la nueva Valkiria (inspirada en Tessa Thompson de "Thor: Ragnarok"). Una nueva saga de Exiles. La mutante Blink de otra realidad tiene un llamado de Unseen (el nuevo y trastornado Nick Fury) que siente una amenaza por llegar, sólo Blink como en anteriores ocasiones será capaz de salvar el Multiverso (conjunto de realidades de diferentes tiempos) para evitar que una poderosa entidad cósmica el "Time-Eater" los consuma. Para ello conocerá nuevos integrantes entre los que están: Wolvie, Valkiria, Iron Maid y Khan.
En general fue un cómic regular, el final relativamente bueno. Aunque la historia repetitiva.

[SzaraReadsComics · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5
While the overall plot didn't blow my mind, I really like the roster of characters so I'm going to continue with this series. Becky Barnes owns my heart!

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The new volume of the Exiles feels like it was written in the '80s or '90s, because it's VERY verbose, full of lots of unnecessary dialogue and often teeny, teeny panels.

That isn't helped by the first arc, which is a five-issue battle against the Time Eater. Oh, there are plenty of nice set pieces within, and the team that Ahmed gathers together is a lot of fun (even if it does take five issues for Lil' Wolvie to be more than comic relief), but between the decompressed plotting and the equally decompressed writing, these issues feel like a bit of a slog.

The sixth issue is much better on both fronts, and hopefully marks a turn around. It also promises some meaningful links to the original Exiles comics. That might be why Marvel decided to include it here, despite the annoying fact that it's the first issue of a new arc that simply to-be-continueds.

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insanely entertaining new series. Javier Rodriguez is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Read as single issues]

A deadly new threat known as the Time Eater is literally devouring dimensions, and only a new team of Exiles can stop it! Called by the Unseen and aided by the Tallus, Blink must cross the multiverse to assemble allies both new and familiar as they desperately search for a way to defeat the Time Eater before all of existence as we know it has been digested!

The original Judd Winick/Tony Bedard Exiles run are some of my favourite X-Men comics (we don’t talk about Chris Claremont Exiles), so when I heard that they were coming back, I was very excited to say the least. This volume of the series however is operated out of the Avengers office rather than the X office, so it’s not surprising that it feels a little different. That said, different isn’t necessarily bad, and this series is off to a very strong start.

Exiles lives and dies on two things – the characters on the team, and the worlds that they visit. These change at the drop of a hat, but get either of them wrong for too long and that’s when it all starts to fall apart. Luckily, writer Saladin Ahmed is no slouch at either of these.

He starts, of course, with Blink – you can’t have Exiles without Blink, after all, and she’s the heart and soul of the book. Then in rapid succession, she’s joined by a post apocalyptic Ms. Marvel, known as Khan, an incarnation of Valkyrie that looks suspiciously like she’s from Thor: Ragnarok, a cartoon version of Wolverine named Wolvie, and a morally ambiguous version of Iron Lad. Each character brings a different perspective to the team, and allows them to look at their surroundings with very different eyes. Like any good Exiles bunch, they’re varied and different and you’re not exactly sure how they’re going to fit together at first, but by the end of these five issues, you’ll be rooting for them to succeed and devastated when one of them falls in battle (another unavoidable part of any Exiles series, unfortunately). The addition of the Unseen as a team leader/director keeps him relevant, and also makes for some amusing developments later in the arc when his younger self ends up joining the team temporarily.

The worlds that the Exiles whizz through are as varied and eclectic as the team itself – not content with just their homeworlds, the characters also visit an alternate World War II with Peggy Carter as Captain America, among others. There’s a sense of urgency that few books manage to capture since the Time Eater is literally at their heels for most of the story, and while it’d be nice to spend more time in each world like the previous series, the snapshots of each that we get show how inventive the creative team are, and how malleable the Marvel Universe is since it bends into each new locale easily and recognizably.

Of course, none of this would be half as impressive without the artistic talents of Javier Rodriguez. His off-kilter panel layouts, double and single page spreads, and page transitions give Exiles a truly unpredictable feel, and he manages to litter the background with little details that make both the characters and the worlds they visit really come to life (check out Wolvie in the back of nearly any page and he’s doing something adorable, I guarantee).

Resurrecting the Exiles was always going to be a gamble, especially with a new office and a relatively new writer at the helm, but it pays off massively. Ahmed crafts a compelling story with a wonderfully diverse group of characters while Rodriguez realises them spectacularly with his trademark pencils. The Exiles may be all over the place, but this series is anything but.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love spending time with original characters (to me at least) going on fun and interesting adventures. This book had that plus Ahmed’s great writing, i love this dudes work; cant wait to read his Miles and Kamala work.

Well back to Exiles, I loved the weirdness and craziness of this volume. At first it did not have a big effect on me but the premise and overall group started to hook me by the end. I loved the alternative character cameos, those were cool. The one thing that annoyed me is how wordy the book it, like really wordy, especially in the early issues. I love this group now and can’t wait to see what shenanigans they get into.

[Sem · Rating 3 out of 5]

A yawn heard around the world, Ahmed's Exiles delivers a great cast of oddball characters (Valkyrie is definitely a favourite with her gleeful charges into battle) but wastes them on a wordy, sluggish comic that tries to be funny and coy while hammering the reader in the face with a thesaurus's worth of text. It just ends up poorly paced and not worthy of the usually great Ahmed and the perpetually amazing Rodriguez. They both have much greater works to feast on, this isn't them at their best.

[Ross Alon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Winick's Exiles is still one of my favorite books, so I was really excited about this one. Sadly this book is a poor imitation to the Exiles former glory, with bad humor, boring plot, horrible interpretations of character (Bucky and valkyrie, I'm looking at you) and Blink isn't acting like Blink.
The writer was trying to make too many references to various things, mostly Winick's run, but the end result is just a bad comic book.

Bought both volumes, so I'll finish the story, but this book shouldn't exist.

[Tym · Rating 3 out of 5]

It failed to capture the spirit of Exiles in my opinion, but not without trying. The biggest disappointment in this volume was Blink who neither, looked, acted or spoke like the Blink I’d grown to know and love. Since the rest of the Exiles from the last volume were summarily dismissed and I found it hard to like many of these new ones (Valkyrie and Wolvie being the exceptions) I didn’t enjoy this volume as much as I could have.

[Michal Vámoš · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skvělý lineární příběh se sympatickými postavami (s výjimkou Wolvieho). Ahmed jede.

[Bekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this look into the multiverse, and the mad cap adventures the team get up to! Also, LOVED Wolvie, Captain Carter and Becky Barnes!

[Gerry Sacco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really disappointing. I didn't like the art that much, and the story was really weird. I got this because I wanted to read more about Blink, and it does highlight her, but wow, what a sub par story.

[Jon Tully · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about Ahmed's take on one of my favorite teams. Of course, there is a hefty serving of personal bias (the original run was my first-ever trade paperback purchase), but, having enjoyed Ahmed's take on Black Bolt, I was willing to give it a try.
I went back and forth, but finally settled on 3 stars.
The first half of the book was FAR too rushed. Where previous iterations of the team would focus on hopping to 1-2 realities per volume (5-6 issues), Ahmed visited that many in the first 2 issues. The pace was exhausting.
However, once the team was established, Ahmed began to hit his stride. I'll be willing to see what volume two looks like; I just believe he was so eager to get to his core story that he rushed the team formation.

[Kyle Dinges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multiverse stories are decidedly not my jam and I wasn't really a fan of the original Exiles, so it's probably no surprise I wasn't blown away with the first volume of this soft reboot/sequel.

What makes Exiles has been and will always be the selection of characters on the team, and this didn't disappoint there. The real standouts for me were the Thor: Ragnarok version of Valkyrie and Khan, a war hardened version of Kamala Khan. But Ahmed tends to get lost in the mechanics at expense of the character work and that caused the story to drag in some places. I'd take less dialogue trying to explain how the Tallus is working and replace it with some more alternate reality adventure.

The artwork is strong in this book. Javier Rodriguez is one of my favorites at Marvel currently, dating to his work on the Sorcerer Supreme book. Just really solid work and the way he draws Wolvie to make him standout from the other characters was very cool. I'd love to see Rodriguez get a chance on some of the higher profile books at Marvel.

All around it's an okay book. Fans of the original Exiles are sure to like it and people who like dimension hopping narratives will probably get more out of it than me.

[Kris Ritchie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Want a fun team of inter-dimensional alt-verse versions of characters you know and love? Check out Grek Pak's X-treme X-men (2012) and avoid this. (Gave up partway through issue 4.)

[Alex Sarll]

This is from a year or two back, but makes perfect sense read alongside What If – it even has a shield-throwing alternate universe Peggy Carter (though if the alias Captain Carter was odd, having her trade as Captain America feels weirder still – Hayley Atwell keeping her accent looms so large now that it quite erases the comics version being from Virginia*). The premise follows from the old Exiles series, refugees from various parallel worlds bouncing between yet more parallel worlds in order to fix threats to the multiverse; the team, apart from Age Of Apocalypse veteran Blink, is new. So we get a cheery, lusty Valkyrie; dark future Ms Marvel, her idealism dead with her family, playing a sort of Cable role even while doing goofy stuff like expanding an ear to listen better; a version of Iron Lad whose differences I could explain better if I'd ever read a single comic featuring the original; and the X-Babies version of Wolverine, who doesn't know what 'kills' means but sure does like friends and pie. And a big part of the fun is that not only does Ahmed write them all in the very different registers they require, but Rodriguez, Lopez and the various colourists manage to make them all look like they come from totally distinct comics and even eras too, without the pages ever feeling incoherent or disjointed. So Valkyrie feels very much like Kirby's off-brand, cheery solo Black Panther run, while Lil' Wolvie is bright and chibi even when being shielded from the sight of dead gods on the Moon. The same trick is repeated with the various worlds they jump through; the pirates versus slavers story feels like The Black Freighter, while the cyborg dinosaurs look exactly like a comic about cyborg dinosaurs should.

Alas, there is one weak link here, and it's a fairly significant one: the story. There are great ideas, not least Nick Fury bridling at his new role as the Unseen, which makes perfect sense but which I don't recall any other comics doing much with. Seriously, who ever thought it would be a good idea to make Earth's most inveterate and sneaky meddler take over the old Watcher gig from Uatu, who was already a devil for quietly mucking in despite all his people's insistence on non-interference? But the threat he has seen is something erasing its way through various timelines, which, did we not do this pretty recently with Secret Wars? And then the problem which can often arise with cosmic stories creeps in, where because everything is already operating on fiat anyway, the terms of reference just keep changing in a way that feels like indecision and/or cheating, so universes which looked very much like they were being erased can actually be restored because...well, because it gives the characters more investment, really. And they're all being shunted from world to world by a Macguffin with a better idea what's going on than they are, so half the time they're barely there long enough to say hi and show us a cool concept before they zap off again without having obviously achieved anything. They're sufficiently fun company for this not to be the book-breaking issue it easily could have been, but for a long time the story is just one damn thing after another. And then that story wraps up, and we get a calmer issue that feels like it's going to be a done-in-one breather - only for it, and the volume, to end on a cliffhanger!

*Conversely, it now appears to be canon that even the female Bucky of another universe will be quite gay. Though, fun as her and Valkyrie does-it-even-count-as-flirting-when-it's-this-blatant was, I will admit to getting very twitchy now when any Bucky is seen juxtaposed with a maritime vessel.

[Adam Stone · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's been a while since I've immediately hated an X-Men related book this much. It's a shame because the characters are interesting.

Exiles, Vol. 1: Down the Rabbit Hole worked because he threw a bunch of characters together, told them time was broken and that they had to fix it. We got character lore dumps from time to time but the world building happened at a fun pace, and tended to swerve a bit, depending on who was writing the title. I loved it.

It would have been fine if this started with a recap of that series, and then threw Blink or a new protagonist into new adventures. Instead, we start with an ominous, cliche opening about a time-eater devouring the universe and the importance of yadda yadda cosmic blah blah before Blink shows up with "a whole new attitude" and starts rescuing new Exiles from disappearing worlds.

It's not too long before some of the old team shows up, and it's...so boring.

The fun of the old run of Exiles was them visiting variations on familiar X-Men storylines where a character or event had been slightly tweaked, and this team of strangers had to fix it.

Here, it's just random dystopias being erased, with the exception being a Li'l universe filled with chibi mutants who make the X-Babies comics seem like Garth Ennis's The Boys.

I almost didn't finish this book, and I am not looking forward to struggling through volume two.

I don't feel any connection to these characters. I'm also bummed out that nobody has done anything interesting with Blink in the X-Men's proper universe. She was so great in the original run of this book, and I'm sad to see that they've relegated her character to this Z-list book.

[Silas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never read the original Exiles, but was aware of its existence and its fairly long run, and knew about a few of the characters in that series from having seen covers at comic shops back in the day. Only Blink is here, and it appears to be the same Blink from that series, and not the returned one from the Krakoa era, which I also only loosely followed. It uses pieces from some other events that I have read, like Nick Fury as the replacement for the Watcher called the Unseen (from an event I really disliked), and Iron Lad from the Young Avengers (which I liked considerably more). We also see a version of Valkyrie that looks a lot like the one from the Thor: Ragnarok movie, a sort of children's cartoon version of Wolverine, and a grimdark version of Ms. Marvel that resembles Cable in a number of ways (big gun included), as well as a sort of '70s era Nick Fury as well. The story is pretty stock. It felt a little bit like recycling elements of older stories, with worlds being destroyed and colliding, things being presented as time travel that are only sort of time travel, and fairly quick and arbitrary gathering of characters. It's not the most original story, but it's capably done, if done a bit in shorthand. I could see that once a group of characters has been established like this, it could slow down and focus more on each place a bit more, and on the relationships between characters. The book also establishes that some of the previous series' characters are still out there, and this series' characters go to find them, setting up the next volume. I own that volume, so I will probably read it, probably sooner rather than later, so I can still remember this one, though if I didn't already own it, I might have given it a pass, since I have only limited interest in seeing where this goes next, since this book didn't really establish these characters all that well.

[Nicholas Karpuk · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me a bit to realize why I wasn't enjoying the first volume of The Exiles. I liked the art, I loved many of the characters, and Saladin Ahmed has been a consistently enjoyable comic writer.

Then it hit me: The plot structure is basically Time Bandits, and I hated Time Bandits.

It's one of those story lines that's essentially characters being shunted through scenarios outside of their control, and I absolutely hate the lack of agency. I can deal with stories that are less about the heroes forging their own path and more about survival, but if the story doesn't even involve the characters using their strengths to survive, then it's just a whole lot of motion without progress.

It takes this comic several issues just to gather up the team, and the bulk of the graphic novel to determine what their purpose is. The majority of this book is a magic item yanking people around. It's not like there's not interesting moments, like when they defeat alternate earth's version of Red Skull from nuking New York, but these are few and far between. It's an entire series that feels like it's stalling for time.

And is it just me, or are Marvel books sometimes insanely more wordy than other companies? Every page is drowning in words, and a lot of it seems needless. Characters can't even fight without oodles of banter, and it's so consistent across different creative teams that I wonder if it's just considered part of the house style.

This book won't stop me from buying other Saladin Ahmed books, but I get why this series didn't run for very long. It's just not satisfying.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first Exiles volume, Test of Time, knows how to have fun with all the weirdness that's built up in the Marvel multiverse over the past 60 years, but it's also tremendously long-winded and maybe more of a head-scratcher than it needs to be. Ahmed is a fine author and Rodriguez is a fine artist, it just feels like the editor went out for a pack of smokes and never came back.

Blink, a teleporting character from the original 90s Exiles team, winds up on the Moon with Nick Fury aka The Unseen. He mysteriously intones about the end of the multiverse, procures the Tallus for Blink, and sends her on her merry way through time and space. The first few issues are spent building the team, which is always a fun exercise. The next few issues are spent wheel-spinning in strange universes with lots of cameos. Namor as a hippie! The Thing as a pirate! It's fun, but it's really kinda dumb.

Eventually, the Exiles figure out how to defeat the Time-Eater (who is actually pretty cool, presented as the giant rotting head of Galactus), although how they actually pull off the feat is a mystery to me. It involves the Tallus, a very important, very underexplained device, I know that much. The final issue sends the Exiles off on a quest to get the old 90s gang back together. Definitely fodder for volume two, which looks like it's going to feature even more weird cameos. Hold onto you butts!

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This did not work for me. There were five main problems.

ONE: They don't really explore different dimensions. That's the Gimmick: The Sliders/Quantum Leap model where you're dropped somewhere familiar with a gimmick. And the fun is sussing out similarities/differences.

TWO: The characters were, so far, very one-dimensional. Iron Lad is smart but shy. Valkyrie all cheerful violence and lust. Wolvie is mostly smiles and sometimes sad/afraid. Kamala is moody, gruff, and distant. We're not supposed to believe that any of these characters are really human except Kamala. They're all incarnations. Now, the first Exiles did a trick: They gave us characters that were goofy power fantasies rather than people. But that was more fun.

THREE: The Big Bad was very big and dismissed very quickly.

FOUR: At the end, it's revealed that the real quest is to find the original Exiles even though we saw them scattered about some of the earlier issues. But that just makes this cast seem extra-flat by comparison? Or at least it makes them very clearly pretenders.

FIVE: The backbone of the story although not at all an interesting part is some dying Nick Fury from another dimension or something?

I love Exiles and Ahmed earned a lot of credit from me from Black Bolt. Maybe if this book were called Blink and the Wacky Pack, I wouldn't judge so harshly, but . . . .

[Solitairerose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't so much a reboot of the Exiles series from the 2000s as an extension. The ides of the series is that an unknown force pulls together heroes that are needed from different alternate universes to assist with events that will destroy or harm yet another alternative universe.

At its best, the original series was a "What If...?" style book with continuing characters. This version starts with a story that is too big, IMHO for the concept. We gather the team over a series of stories, and they are up against a villain that is able to destroy entire universes, moving from one to another.

With a threat that big, the conclusion felt flat, and the heroes were gifted the solution that was for too easy for a foe that had unlimited power. It also causes the problem that if they can defeat a universe devouring monster, what can be a threat to them?

The characters are well done, their interactions are entertaining, but the overall plot just doesn't work and feel as if it is trying to do too much in five issues.

[Thresk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite a very seductive cover (I'm a sucker for Marvel Cosmic and the spacey cyan-magenta vibe) this is a pretty mediocre book.

I actually don't find the cynical pandering of Marvel's inclusivity mandate bothersome in this case; my objection is with the tediousness of the events (which despite having WhOlE rEaLiTiEs At StAkE feel stakeless because of the brevity of our leads' interactions with them), rehashing of done-to-death Wolfman / Hickman plots, and tepid, cliche characters and exchanges. Tonally, Ahmed can't find a balance between the banal lightheartedness of the team's Bronze Age Marvel house-style interchange and the gravity of the plot.

Art's pretty good, though; Rodriguez' retro lines and the uniformly excellent coloring work (particularly O'Halloran's and Rodriguez') are really nice.

[Ryan Schriml · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot more than I actually did. I love the idea of a ragtag bunch of heroes pulled from various Earths in the Multiverse but it just never really gels from a story or character perspective.

Ahmed has good ideas but his characters talk wayyyyyy too much. His version of Ms Marvel is kinda terrible. Her husband and daughter have died so she’s angry but then he basically fridges her so there’s almost no character development nor redemption (her death is such a waste).

That said, Blink and Valkyrie are fantastic. I would’ve like Khan to stick around so we could get some great inter-generational bickering.

Iron Lad is such a dud and Wolvie is kinda weird but has potential.

The climactic fight is just not good. Deus ex multiverse is not a great twist.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd been interested in this series because of the wacky AU characters. 2 and half issues in, and they were all still very one-note, and the "plot" was incredibly boring and thin. Luckily, it got considerably better by the end. The time-eater plot was resolved pretty quickly, Khan sacrificed herself, which honestly was good, because I hate to say it, but she brought the team down hard. I wanted to like "old lady kamala khan" but she was just a grump, and not very interesting. Valkyrie is consistently my favorite character, she's so much fun and I especially love her flirting with "Becky" and others. The last issue, with a wild west version of the Brotherhood of Mutants, was the best so far, I'm hoping book 2 keeps up that level of quality.

[Kori Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was expecting to like this more than I actually did. If nothing else the characters continuing to stop for parties got mind boggling dumb. Something bad happened and the end of most parties including one where they literally let the whole of New Your and New Jersey get Nuked better they decided to have a party right next to an unstable untested nuclear bomb and not keep that great of an eye on it. Valkyrie continuing to flirt with Becky like she didn’t just watched her get literally nuked was a strange choice. And then they go right back to partying after like there’s a difference between refusing to wallow in misery and not having basic pattern recognition. The art and designs were still great and there was moments I liked so it gets a middleing 2.5 stars from me.

[Camilo Guerra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blink, la mutante teletransportadora es llamada nuevamente a salvar el multiverso !!!, y le será asignado un equipo movido y algo raro, para luchar contra una cabeza de Galactus zombie que come universos.

LO BUENO: El arte de Javier Rodriguez es hermoso, no tiene panel malo, diseño aburrido...el tipo es un genio, con unas paginas dobles que te quitan el aliento , y un dinamismo y facilidad de meterte en la historia que te hace avanzar y acabar paginas sin darte cuenta.Sus diseños de Valkirya, Wolvie, son simplemente hermosos y su( SPOILERS) ultimo numero del recopilatorio es simplemente alucinante, su Kang da miedo, y mucho.

LO MALO: Los primeros 03 números son previsibles, aburridos, y sientes que se mueven muy, muy lento y esto afecta mucho a la obra.

[Chad Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An fun, enjoyable read, if you like stories about a misfit crew saving both space and time from utter destruction at the hands of an power hungry megalomaniac. It's a perfect marvel multiverse story, mixing reality-bending scenarios with pithy quips. Ahmed brings his usual touch to the story, foregrounding characterization, telling a human story, just as much as he is telling a superhero one.

I enjoyed this book, but at points found the pacing rushed. The team dynamics shifted from cautious hostility to cohesion a little to quickly. Admittedly, I don't read many super hero books, so maybe that's par for the course, but it left me feeling a tad jarred.