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By Jason Bourgeois
Last month I rambled at length on the topic of Marvel NOW! I think it's time, much like I did with the New 52 (which is no longer new, by any stretch, so they need a new name, but I digress...), to get a little more granular with particular titles.
I thought I'd start out with the comic, All-New X-Men. It spins out indirectly from the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, most notably that Cyclops has gone a bit off the rails, is currently a wanted criminal, and many of his lifelong friends are rather cross at all this.
Now, I was not thrilled about this comic, to say the least. First of all, it's written by Brian Michael Bendis. Longtime readers of Grey Matters know I have no great love for his comics. I've read a few things that have been okay, but for the most part I dislike some decisions he makes, and on the whole, don't care for his output and quirks.
On top of that, there's the very premise. In short, Hank McCoy has decided to do something about Cyclops going a bit Magneto, and thinks it would be a brilliant idea to go back in time, pick up Scott's younger self, and introduce the two. In hopes that the younger might be so traumatised by what he sees that he might never become this modern version of Cyclops, or that the elder version might just see how far he has fallen and course correct.
Along the way, he takes the entire original five X-Men from a point pretty early on in their careers, I'd say within the first 20 issues or so, if I had to put a number to it.
Now, as a concept, I actually LIKE this idea. It's a great story to confront the present with the past. So many X-Men stories have been in the shadow of Days of Future Past, where the X-Men learned about the dark future of mutant subjugation and imprisonment. Now we get the inverse, bringing the past to us, and what THEY see looks JUST as bad as DoFP did to everyone back in the early 80s.
I can roll with that! Things are so terrible thanks to metatextual reasons, due to dramatic writing and such, and with so much history, that even if Scott wasn't the new Magneto, things would look pretty bleak. That's a great idea for exploring characters and themes of the X-Men, and works within their long established tropes, yet have turned them on their heads.
The problem comes from this being an ongoing series. Okay, bring the original five to the present, we get to explore characters, have our fun, move forward, and send everyone home, right? That's a great miniseries, in theory. The modern characters can look forward and strive to do better, the past characters can keep an eye out to not fall in the same traps, or they get mind wiped to preserve history, so things happen as they always did.
But um, that's not what they're doing here. Oh no, the original five are staying here, in the present. Does anyone see this as a problem? Eek.
So yes, I have some issues with the premise. This can't work as a long term thing. Literally, it CAN NOT continue indefinitely. It has to be undone at some point, or they have to rethink things and bring in multiple realities. Which is fine, but right now, they're playing things straight.
With all that going into the book, it is a wonder that I was wary. To say the least. But the idea intrigued me, I love time travel, and this title looked to be setting the tone for the rest of the X-Line, so I at least wanted to check it out.
Boy, was I surprised.
I actually quite liked the first issue. Maybe it was my low expectations, but maybe, just maybe, Bendis actually found a good voice to use here. A lot of the book works. There's still a few flaws, a few quirks, but he seems mostly reigned in.
I still have issues with the premise, but I do like where things are going. Jean Grey has taken the lead of the timelost X-Men, and after seeing everything she alone has gone through, she has decided they're going to stay. Stay and fix things as best they can. She doesn't want the team to go back and be mindwiped, guaranteeing that these events will transpire, and it was a wasted trip. She wants to fix things NOW and THEN go back, so even if they're memories are erased by the future, at least things will eventually be fixed.
Well, again! I like that! I can roll with that, too! In fact, it at least points to maybe someday wanting them to go home, so it is on someone's mind. It's not a fix to my issues, but it acknowledges them enough. And is a good twist, once again, on typical time travel tropes. Why go back to the past and try and fix things, when you might be mindwiped by handy telepaths, or fall into causality and end up creating that which you want to stop? Fix it now, and go home with a somewhat clear conscience. That's pretty unique.
Okay, so I'm on board. Which is surprising.
The book wastes a little too much time with sideplots though, that are only serving to set up other titles, like the rerebooted Uncanny X-Men. I'd rather this book be this book, and not a springboard for others that are going to be just fine on their own. But it's a minor complaint, since we do need Scott to be a player in this title, and it allows the new team he's forming to be defined for this book before the other one comes out.
Only in recent issues though, have larger problems begun to emerge. Now, grabbing the original five X-Men from the sixties to 2012...well, the issue there should be apparent. The comic started off handling it pretty well. They stuck to mostly a visual style that felt dated, but not SO dated that it felt like it would have been wildly out of place. Mostly just fashion and styles, that's fine. You look at them and go, "Oh, they are clearly from the past!"
But now that these characters are in the present, they're starting to act like they ARE from the sixties. Scott doesn't know what bottled water is, he's shocked SHOCKED! that magazines are five bucks...which is a high price, but hey. They have not changed much since 2000, which is more or less when they would have come from with Marvel's sliding timeline. Making them SO clearly from the 60s in their reactions starts to make this all fall apart and hurt my head. They are not 60 years old, so stop treating them like that much time as passed FOR THEM.
Also, it feels really forced to have Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde bonding over things that there are better people for. Kitty shows her how to control her newfound telepathic powers? HOW many teeps does this school have? Like Jean's own daughter?? Okay, that could be an issue itself, but this is after Jean learns everything, so she should know about Rachel, at least. But again, I digress.
They also bond and become friends while Jean's oldest friend, Storm, is standing right there. They even point out that they're friends, but no, let's pair her up with Kitty. Now, since Kitty is going to be the liaison (Or Professor K, as she loathes being called) for the old team and the modern world, you need to have her in the fold, so I'm not too twitchy over this stuff, but it IS forced. Fine enough though, to build connections.
So, on a whole, All-New X-Men is a really good comic, with great artwork by Stuart Immonen, and writing by Brian Bendis that actually makes me not want to run away screaming. In fact, it has sold me on the idea, for the most part.
There are flaws, but they're being dealt with in decent enough ways, or hopefully will go places that will be explained and less annoying in the future. I certainly look forward to where things will go from here, and highly recommend the book for a fan of X looking for a solid book and good adventure.
And hey, they fixed the look of Beast, so he's no longer a cat. I'm not sure if his more gorilla like form is an improvement, but it is closer to his classic look, and I can run with it.
Just don't get me started on this book putting forth the idea of the Phoenix Force breaking mutant powers of its hosts, which it never did before. Please let that be a plot point they're wrong about, and we learn the truth later on.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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