Cable and X-Force 6, All-New X-Men 9

Cable and X-Force 6
Hopeless (w) and Larocca (a) and D'Armata (c)

One of the things that I've really liked about this series so far and which carries the book more often than not is the camaraderie of this team. When I actually sit and think about it, it's kind of a risky move. Usually newly-formed teams have to go through the growing pains of what it is they're doing and who they're working with and so on. To skip that (at least for now, Hopeless could definitely still get into it later) is a bit of a risky move because it could make the book feel a little unrealistic. You throw all these people together and you get a perfectly functioning team with a solid rapport? Suspicious. But this team doesn't feel like that. I think a big part of it is who the team leader is. Cable is supposed to be a great leader. It's in his history and it's in his nature. He's also a master strategist. It makes total sense, in the context of his character, that he would deliberate on a team, then bring them together and they'd work well as a unit almost immediately. There were bumps in the road in the first arc (and there are bound to be more as we continue) but people weren't at each other's throats. They all get along because Cable chose them all to get along.

The team chemistry is what makes this book really flow. The plots are interesting and the plans to accomplish the goals are even more interesting, but the team itself is the real draw of this book. Everyone, just six issues in, has a very specific rapport with everyone else and it's a lot of fun to watch it all happen. Every character has a distinct voice and vocabulary, which helps illustrate the characters even further. Cable's team, now featuring Boom Boom, breaks into a SWORD prison which happens to be the same one Colossus has just handed himself into. They're not there to break him out, though Domino goes to visit the guilt-ridden Russian. The team is there to steal an alien to steal a spaceship. It's pretty exciting to know that this team is going to be going into space, once they get past Cyclops, who has tracked down his son as the issue ends. There's also a nice scene here between Wolverine and Colossus and between Kitty and Colossus (kind of) where she breaks into his room and leaves him art supplies and a note before running out. It's a nice little touch after everything Kitty and Peter have been through to have Hopeless point to that relationship, whatever might come of it. Just an all around solid issue driven by the characters. There's still a plot happening in the foreground and one lurking in the background (involving the first scene of the first issue, where the Uncanny Avengers stumbled onto Cable's team with all the dead factory workers) but this book feels like it could survive even if they never went any where. Speaking of things not going any where...

All-New X-Men 9
Bendis (w) and Immonen and Von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia and Beredo (c)

My earlier review today was linked by the discussion of narrators. My reviews are almost all consciously linked together in some way (ie, two Wolverine books, two Avengers books, etc.) but I usually list them out and pair them together at the start of a week, before I've read the book. I did that this week too, but I hadn't figured out which two books to link with one another in each individual review of the day. After reading the four books, I knew I wanted to talk about narration with those two books which left these two. I deemed this acceptable because, even without finding a link, it meant comparing a book I'm really enjoying with a book I'm really not enjoying. How minute can that comparison go? I'm comparing a book with great characters to a book with off-character characters? I CAN GO EVEN FURTHER. I'm comparing a book with a good Kitty Pryde and a book with a bad Kitty Pryde.

Kitty is not a member of Cable's X-Force team. She only shows up for a couple pages as she leaves a note for Peter in his cell saying that she's having trouble reconciling the Peter in her head with the Peter who has done the things he's accused of saying. She's conflicted by their awful "date" when he had the Phoenix Force but she's proud of him for turning himself in (which is not the adjective Wolverine would use) and she hasn't been able to bring herself to actually talk with him in the midst of everything. She's almost gotten there four times already before finally leaving this note. This Kitty, in two pages, is deep and conflicted and so spot-on with the Kitty that's already established in the Marvel Universe and that, more importantly, matches the Kitty that's been so instrumental to the X-corner of the Universe for the past several years. The Kitty in All-New X-Men, though, has fallen into the same convenient narrative trap that everyone else in All-New X-Men seems to have fallen into, which is that this school was formed for the exact opposite reason of these issues. Wolverine wanted the school to be a haven for mutant kids to come and learn. They'd be taught defense, sure, because conflict is unavoidable, but by and large he wanted to provide them a place where they didn't have to go out and fight. Kitty is the perfect headmistress for the school because these are all things she believes in and subscribes to. But when the original X-Men team shows up, all of that is out the window as she instantly volunteers to train the team in the present as opposed to sending them straight back to the past. This issue shows her working with the kids in the Danger Room instead of, for example, sending them straight back to the past. I can't wrap my head around the Kitty who decides she's a better teacher for these kids than Professor X. It also doesn't make sense to me, if the excuse is "well if the kids are going to stay here (and maybe they CAN make a difference) then SOMEONE has to train them," that Kitty doesn't decide "hey, they're NOT going to stay here because that's absurd."

In this issue, after a disastrous Danger Room session, Jean and Kitty find out that Scott met with Mystique (who is currently aiding Sabretooth in breaking Lady Mastermind out of SHIELD holding; Lady Mastermind and Mystique sure an unironic dialogue about how maybe she should drop the "Lady" part because it seems a bit sexist while wearing a costume, at right, that she may have put on backwards and forgotten to zip). Warren, fresh off having his mind altered to want to stay in the present, meets with Hank to learn about mutants and the issue ends with Cyclops' new X-Men team arriving at the school, as was set up in the last Uncanny X-Men issue. Another issue, another review with me saying "I guess some things happened but it certainly feels like a lot more COULD have happened in the time given."