All-New X-Men 6, Savage Wolverine 1, X-Factor 250, X-Men 40

All-New X-Men 6
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a)

There are lots of good uses of snappy dialogue in media and, probably, in society. The kind of snappy dialogue that's just beat after beat, sass after sass, interruption after interruption. You see it a lot in TV shows like Gilmore Girls or Archer. The reason it tends to work well is that there's a chemistry between characters that makes it more fluid and often it sounds like a real conversation, though noticeably cleaner. If it's obnoxious, it's usually meant to be obnoxious. People cutting off one another is usually played to illustrate tensions between characters or in a situation. I don't really think snappy dialogue is where comics need to go. Let me adjust that: I think there's a way for snappy dialogue to work in comics but it absolutely cannot be as ubiquitous as it is in some TV shows. It's definitely a trait Bendis has gotten into recently, both in his Avengers/New Avengers runs and now in this. I don't even think he's particularly bad at writing that way. I think he does have a feel for natural speech. However, it often doesn't translate on to the page because comics have different pacing than TV or movies. Also, there are a whole bunch of times where someone cuts someone else off in Bendis' comics and we move on to the next moment. A bunch. If I were those characters, I'd be like "DUDE, STOP CUTTING ME OFF." Again, it works in TV and movies because that behavior is supposed to be coming from more obnoxious characters. I think it worked when Bendis did it with Spider-Man because there's no doubt everyone in the Avengers ignores Spider-Man.

In this issue, the original X-Men have chosen to stay with the current X-Men and boy can I see how summarizing this issue might get confusing fast. Let's call the original Jean's group and the current Wolverine's group. The Wolverteam. Yes, we'll call them Wolverteam. OKAY, so Jean's group is staying at the Wolverteam School for Wolverining. Jean has just become a telepath years earlier than anticipated because that happened already in the series and you should keep up and not ask so many questions. Kitty Pryde, who has volunteered to be Jean's group's Xavier (despite her current position as Headmistress of the Wolverteam School, AKA the reigning administrator since Wolverine is never around), helps her control her telepathy through methods she learned from later-Jean. Storm shows up too. As a side note, I like the art in this issue, but I really like how Kitty's drawn. Her eyes, mostly. ANYWAY, Cyclops is mad that everyone hates him and he steals Wolverine's motorcycle and goes into town to talk about how much things have changed since his time. This is a tough bit of issue because Marvel time is very screwed up. The X-Men have been around since the 60s but I'm pretty sure that Cyclops and Iceman and Beast and Angel aren't in their 60s or 70s but modern Marvel takes place in relatively modern times, so when lil Cyclops goes into town and asks why water is bottled here, I have some trouble believing he's never encountered bottled water before. Wolverine finds him, they fight, and Cyclops gets away. Meanwhile lil Angel meets current Angel and they hug. I guess some things happened in this issue, but largely things that felt like they could have happened in half the time. There's a real feel with this book that you could buy every third or fourth issue and keep pretty well in the know about it. But this review is already too long to delve into that, so let's move right along to...

Savage Wolverine 1
Cho (w and a)

This book is being promoted as kind of a barebones Wolverine book. The letters page screams that it's about "babes, brawls, and brachiosaurs" and, well, actually, it absolutely is. To emphasize that point, the supporting character that they give Wolverine in this first arc is Shanna the She-Devil of the Savage Land (OH, because Savage Wolverine, I get it), also known as "the least dressed character in the Marvel Universe if you count Tigra's fur as clothing." Little known fun fact about Shanna's clothing: the loin cloth bikini bottom she has on is actually two separate pieces of bikini bottom not attached by anything in the middle, so when she falls or runs too fast or really does anything that isn't standing perfectly still, all is revealed. Also, her top is not so much a top as it is cloth napkins.

Okay, let's push forward. Wolverine lands in the Savage Land after some sort of mysterious force apparently brought him there. He brawls with and kills a dinosaur (not a brachiosaur, this book is RIFE with inaccuracies) before finding a SHIELD agent being carried off by natives. He promptly kills the natives and learns about the location of the SHIELD transport Shanna was assisting when it crashed before Wolverine arrived. The agent dies and Wolverine sets off for the transport. He's quickly stabbed by Shanna after a weird misunderstanding wherein she gets in front of him with enough time to use a spear after sneaking in behind him. There is no way to communicate off the island and seemingly no way to leave their little patch of the Savage Land beyond bombing part of an ancient relic that looks like Cthulu so maybe, if they can avoid it, they should not bomb it. They are set upon by mean pterodactyls and that's that for now.

I can definitely see this book being something kind of fun. I don't know how seriously it'll delve into anything in Wolverine's character beyond "he likes to have sex with women and also to stab things with his claws" but it will probably deliver the same kind of fun as an action movie. That said, I'm of the opinion that comics are for everyone and that they are frowned upon by the larger parts of society for things like Shanna's clothing. I get it, I get it, she lives in the Savage Land like so much Tarzan with Kazar and he doesn't wear much either but he's not nearly as sexualized as her. And yes, there's an aspect of "knowing your audience" involved here. I do imagine, though, that we'll see a lot more of this kind of thing in this book so be prepared or drop it now.

X-Factor 250
David (w) and Kirk (a)

We're tying up some loose ends with the return of Rahne (not thrilled) and her son Tier, who Darwin is trying desperately to kill. I don't much care for Rahne, I just couldn't ever bring myself to, which upsets me because I like this team a whole lot. Darwin is trying to kill Tier for reasons we aren't yet aware, though we have seen this chase set up several times before in the comic. Rahne brings Tier to X-Factor for protection, though Darwin quickly tracks them there and attacks again. He's unable to, when he gets the chance, kill the wolfboy and finally we find out why it's so important to him, as several various rulers and would-be rulers of Hell descend on X-Factor to "kill Tier and get this war over with." No doubt big things are afoot in the X-Factor corner of the world, so we'll wait to see how it all plays out.

Aside from the plot summary, the book is pretty standard X-Factor, probably fewer character moments than we're used to seeing in favor of explaining Tier and Darwin and Rahne's reappearance. This issue had to spend more time on moving the plot forward than on moving the plot forward with the characters we care about (I don't know, maybe someone who loves Rahne still considers this issue full of plot motion surrounded by characters we care about). The thing about X-Factor is that, despite the lack of the typical character moments, it still isn't ever a really bad issue. The hell-war is no doubt going to be something of interest moving forward so obviously it's worth dedicating an issue to its start. I do hope we get more character-driven in the future, though at this point I'm more hoping for Peter David to recover quickly from a stroke. If you want to support Peter David, buying this book isn't a bad start, but buying his books, like that link describes, does a bit more. Or write him thousands and thousands of tweets wishing him a speedy recovery. That will probably do less than buying one of his three dollar books though and will almost certainly cost you more time.

X-Men 40
Peck (w) and Palo and Mogorron (a)

The next issue, 41, is being advertised as "the end of an era," which seems a bit strange as this issue was the first without the Psylocke, Domino, Colossus version of Storm's team. Here she and Pixie are traveling with Chamber, Angel, and Iceman in search of new mutants. After a quick training session, they head out to meet with a new technopath, someone who can talk to machines, whose mutation manifested after a car crash involving him and his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to the X-Men, the Pentagon has also created a team to search out new mutants for recruiting, though to what ends we're still unsure. Local cops have already attacked the boy, prompting him to stack some cars up as protection, as he appears to have some level of telekinesis as well. He seems at least willing to listen when the X-Men approach him before he's again shot at and creates a transformer of cars, which Bobby puts down with his suddenly very powerful ice. We see the "Freedom Force" the Pentagon has put together as the issue ends.

The "end of an era" bit has thrown me off here, unsure of where they plan on going after this issue, but there were some notable things in here. First, I understand now why an iteration of these X-Men showed up in X-Men Legacy 4 last week. Second, it's nice to see Bobby using his powers at the higher level he's always had a potential to reach and to be, one would think, second-in-command of a team. Most personalities of these X-Men were touched upon here, though we didn't hear much from Bobby and I got a better sense of Chamber's personality from Legacy than I did from this issue where he was a star. We'll see what that "end of an era" tagline is all about going forward and if this team will be entirely used for new mutant pickup in the way Generation Hope was before it.



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