Writer: Brian Bendis
Artists: Stuart Immonen (pencils) Wade Von Grawbadger (inks) Marte Garcia (colors)
It gets harder and harder these days to review individual comic books. Between my schedule, the "decompressed" nature of many comic-book storylines and the fact that comic books nowadays contain only twenty pages of story, reviewing a single issue is starting to feel a little tedious, considering that my reviews may even contain more text than the comic books themselves.
Still, the beauty of the "decompressed" era of comics is that by waiting for several issues to pass before posting a review I find myself able to better appreciate how the individual issues fit as parts of a whole.
Brian Michael Bendis, in particular, writes this way and as a result it is easier to review his new series, All New X-Men, in clusters rather than as individual issues.
All New X-Men, which takes place in the wake of the cataclysmic events that occurred in the Avengers vs. X-Men miniseries, in which founding member of the X-Men, Cyclops, acting under the influence of the Phoenix Force, murdered the founder of the X-Men, Professor Charles Xavier. The X-Men are divided into two camps, basically Cyclops' group of X-Men and Wolverine's, with the former espousing a revolutionary, somewhat violent agenda.
Desperate to stop him, the Beast/Henry McCoy comes up with a bold idea: to bring the five original X-Men forward in time so that young Scott can confront his older counterpart and, Beast hopes, bring some sense back into him. Of course, as with all the best laid plans, things go amiss, and the X-Men from the past are, in a word, appalled. Of course, apart from his depression at the way things have ended up, Beast has other problems to wrestle with as well; apparently he's mutating yet again, and he fears that this time the mutation may kill him.
In the course of the issues, two crucial things happen to the original X-Men that pretty much change them forever; they encounter Cyclops and his new teammates, who include their archnemesis Magneto, and the teenaged Jean Grey not only sees into the mind of the future version of her boyfriend, thereby knowing for certain that he killed the X-Men's mentor, but also sees her entire, tragic future, courtesy of the older version of Hank McCoy's memories.
Now, to be clear I am not a fan of time-travel stories because of how hard it is to keep track of the rules, but as time-travel stories, go, the premise of this one is particularly hard to swallow because by moving the original X-Men forward in time, Hank McCoy has basically ensured that, unless and until they go back, they will not be around for any of the things that happened to them between the past and the present, a situation which should have catastrophic consequences considering how many times the X-Men saved the world. Hank McCoy's solution seemed short-sighted and rather unlike something that someone as smart as he's supposed to be would devise.
As difficult as the premise is to accept, though, Bendis' script is still pretty entertaining, and even though his usual dialogue seems rather ill-fitting for the original mutant team at times, the story still flows well enough.
The series is basically propelled by its "teens out of time" element, and in this aspect Bendis excels. While I could never put aside my problem with the repercussions of the X-Men being removed from their time, I was entertained by seeing their reaction to being in a future far removed from the world they knew.
Bendis has always had a good eye for collaborators and this talent is exemplified here by his choice of veteran artist Stuart Immonen. Immonen, whose work I have followed since he teamed up with Warren Ellis on Ultimate Fantastic Four and later, the well-regarded Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., is quite arguably one of the most capable storytellers in the business, even if he isn't always the flashiest artist around. For one thing, I can categorically say that his characters are hands down some of the most expressive in all of comics. This is crucial when depicting the emotional wringer that the main characters in this book are going through. Truth be told, for me, Immonen was the main selling point of this series, and the icing on the cake is that he's going to be spelled by David Marquez, whose art I also enjoy immensely.
Still, this book hinges largely on a story device that has to be resolved eventually because obviously, the X-Men cannot spend too much time OUT of their time and for that I fault Bendis, who clearly came up with the idea. It's an engaging book in its own right but one wonders how sustainable it will be without this conceit of the X-Men being "out of time" or even how quickly this novel story premise will get old.
3.5/5
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