Astonishing X-Men 60, X-Men Legacy 8, Uncanny X-Force 3

Astonishing X-Men 60
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Liu (w) and Buffagni and Arlem (a) and Sotomayor and Loughridge (c)

This event, as I think is the nature of it, is pretty confusing. I wonder how someone who hadn't been reading these three series would feel coming into this event and bouncing between books to try to figure it out. Fortunately, that's not a problem I have to worry about. The three cosmic beings that entered through the portal and killed head-in-a-jar Xavier remain present and, it turns out, absorb and emit energy. The absorption rate seems much higher, as they physically grow with enough energy added to them. Dazzler attempts to attack them but they drain her powers pretty quickly, leaving her weakened but she's stopped before dying. The Wolverines attack and find themselves rebuffed by an aura around the entities. Their healing factor isn't fast enough to keep them in the fight too long and the healing factor of the three beings is too fast to allow them to make a dent. Northstar runs through their chests and temporarily stuns them, giving enough time to pull the Wolverines out, and Bobby manages to freeze them temporarily using just about all the power he has. However, by all means, these three seem practically unbeatable.
While weakened, Karma tries to get into their heads but it ends up reverberating back on her. She announces their thoughts: they are cosmic beings, enemies to the Celestials, and were trapped outside of dimensions by the Celestials, but all the recent transporting between dimensions has weakened the borders and allowed them through. Karma is expelled from their minds and, like everyone else, weakened. Sensing more power in the 616, one of the beings goes through the portal to its Earth while the other two stay behind. One heads for the city and the Apocalypse seed, the other begins to devour the portal. Prophet quickly splits the heroes (and dark Beast) into teams, one team to stay and fight in the AoA and one to head back to the 616. There's a sampling of each crossed-over team in the new teams. Sabretooth and his dad attack the portal-eating being, seemingly sacrificing themselves to create a diversion while people sneak back to Earth.
I said this event is so far confusing. That doesn't mean it's bad. In fact, once you kind of get a grip on what's happening, it's pretty riveting and, despite all the action and all the characters and all the exposition and shouting, it's a really fast read. I do think, though, that it's a smart idea to separate the teams a little bit so that not everyone is together throughout the event. As we hit the half-way point of the full event (including the prologues), I think this book is in a pretty good spot. So far it's been paced pretty well. I'm interested in seeing how the rest of the event turns out, as now we're truly in the thick of things and there are still four issues remaining across four different titles.

QUICK ADDITION: I just learned that both X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse (which you may recognize as two of the three books involved in this crossover event) have been cancelled. It's too bad, I think both were compelling reads (somewhat surprisingly to me with X-Treme) that felt a little off-the-beaten-path for X-books. I might write more on these cancellations eventually.

X-Men Legacy 8
Spurrier (w) and Huat and Yeung (a) and Villarrubia (c)

Another really fun entry to the series with a tense addition to the ongoing story. As with last issue, this story is pretty self-contained. David has found a young mutant named Santi Sardina with the ability to take credit. I know, it sounds weird but it's definitely a new power. Essentially, Santi receives praise for anything praiseworthy around him; if people watch a good movie in his vicinity, he gets credit for making it, if someone reads a poem that strikes a chord with them, he gets credit for writing it, etc. He doesn't understand what's happening for a long while and, when he eventually does, he's pretty quickly fed up with it. He doesn't use it to his advantage (not intentionally, anyway) but, as David explains to Blindfold from their spot watching this drama unfold in what David called the psychosphere (the dream plane), it wears on him as he becomes unable to distinguish any genuinely deserved praise from the praise he'd be bound to get anyway. Santi is ready to drop out of school and remove himself from human contact to end the misdirected adulation but, David explains, he's planning to give things one more shot. He's looking to sign up for an extracurricular. Blindfold wants David to nudge him to art club, as Santi enjoys graffiti, but David has other plans. He explains to Blindfold the implications of this power. If he joins the student government now, he'll be class president in a year, elected official in three, governor by 28 and president right at 35. It would be the first mutant president and it would be a huge windfall for mutantkind, something to turn the tides. This, David feels, is what his father's dream would be; a wonderful representative for mutants that is uniformly loved (even if it's a little undeserved) and in a position to affect real change.
However, just as David is about to push Santi that way, David's mind is attacked by the monster that's been hiding in it. David, normally relegating himself to the shadows of his own mind to avoid this monster, is unprepared and can't gather any of his powers in time. He's about to lose the fight for his mind and body when the Charles in David's mind takes control and expels the monster. Charles disappears into David's mind again and David regains control shakily. He turns back to his mantra of "I rule me" and realizes that everyone should be able to say those words. He nudges Santi to art, which leads to some great superhero-based artwork anonymously created and praised (though, again, as it's anonymous, Santi isn't the one praised for it).
It's another really good entry with a solid story and a unique set of circumstances all tied together in a thought-provoking way. I love Santi's power and his aversion to it. I know it's maybe a little unexpected in a world full of people with laser-eyes and bone claws, but I think it's a good dig at that side of mutantdom. Mutant powers are undefined by their nature and so truly can be pretty much anything. I like the drive David has right now to achieve Charles' dream and I can see the logic in his using the method he proposes here. The abrupt entrance and exit of the mind-Charles put this whole series in a new and interesting place as we get another look at the story in David's head. There are also great things happening with the layout of this comic. David spends a lot of time in his own head. When we're seeing something happen outside of his head, we see his thoughts in captions, as is true in so many comics. When we view David inside his own head, there's a loudspeaker system shouting out his thoughts, the ones that would be in the captions. It's a really wonderful idea. His relationship with Blindfold continues to improve and impress. The title page, which featured the name of everyone involved crossed out and replaced by "Santi Sardina," was a great touch, as is Spurrier's inclusion of Pixie as Blindfold's friend and roommate so he can write more Scottish characters. All around, just a great book and another great issue. If you're a Marvel fan and have some background reading comics (I think this might be a hard book to dive into comics with) and want to get into the mutant wing of the Marvel Universe, this is a great book to go with. It's small enough to not feel like you're missing out on decades of backstory and continuity but still gives a great sense of mutant purpose and the place of mutants in this world. Really wonderful book.

Uncanny X-Force 3
Humphries (w) and Garney and Hanna w/Alphona and Strain (a) and Gracia w/ Gonzalez (c)

Another action-packed issue of this new iteration of X-Force as Puck, Storm and Psylocke question Spiral on the little girl (named Ginny) and Bishop's sudden appearance. Spiral reveals that she had "teamed up" with Ginny to help them both make their way in this world (a six-armed supervillain can't exactly get a job at In-N-Out Burger, Spiral explains) by opening a club and having the telepathic Ginny make everyone believe they're feeling whatever feelings they came looking for. There's an interesting question of ethics here that this team just does not have time for right now. Bishop is on the scent of Ginny and they don't have time to wait for backup from the school. Psylocke locks in on Ginny's location and Spiral teleports them to the LA subway system Psylocke directed her to. There they find Bishop and Ginny. Bishop is still crazy and extremely fast and strong, making the fight, weaving all around trains, an extremely difficult one for the team. Spiral grabs Ginny and teleports on to a train to get them away from it. Eventually, Betsy psychically stabs Bishop which has the unexpected negative effect of sending her into his mind, which is maze-like and a trap itself, she discovers as the issue ends. Meanwhile, the good Fantomexes have parachuted out of a plane over LA while the bad Fantomex watched.
There's a lot happening here in terms of action and some exposition, but it still feels like the story is kind of taking its time coming to us. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea, though I do think some things are going to have to start connecting pretty soon. You can only drag a story so long before mystery and suspense give way to annoyance and frustration (ask Lost how their fans took to unanswered questions over a long period of time). I do think that the next few issues will be crucial in defining this series. We're at least waist-deep into what could be a pretty compelling story on a couple different sides and I don't think that revealing all the answers to the story at once, especially in issue three, is the right move. However, some answers are going to have to start spilling through (or at least trickling through) to keep readers invested. I think putting Betsy in Bishop's mind is a good place to start digging for clues. Putting all the Fantomexes in the same city as our team is another clever move. It's putting all the pieces into play on a chessboard and arranging them in a way that you know the actual carnage (there's a lot of carnage in chess, right?) is right around the corner. So I think this is another stepping-stone issue but not without reason. If we go another few issues with stepping-stone issues the series will be in trouble, but for now I think it's moving at a pretty smart pace.