Deadpool 26, Guardians of the Galaxy 13

Deadpool 26
Posehn and Duggan (w) and Koblish (a) and Staples (c)

Another flashback issue for DEADPOOL as we go into the past to find Deadpool teaming up with Nick Fury to stop a time-traveling Hitler from scouring the timeline and killing Nick Fury to stop all of the interferences the Howling Commandoes have caused. Hitler gets his hands on a time machine when, just like has happened so often to him, a time traveler comes attempting to kill him and he defeats the time traveler. He goes through time trying to destroy Fury at various points in his life but has finally honed in on what Hitler sees to be his weakest time; his time between the war and the CIA. Cable and Deadpool have figured out his plan and are time jumping to try to save him. A giant battle ensues and Hitler actually succeeds, but not before Deadpool can send off a postcard which Cable receives in the future, allowing him to jump to the moments before Fury and Deadpool die and save them. The three of them slaughter Hitler then place him in the bunker while Deadpool yells through the door as Hitler about how he's going to commit suicide knowing the war is unwinnable.

This book is right on the edge of being maddeningly frustrating because there are parts of it that, ignoring how offensive some people may read it, are truly very funny and then there are parts that just carry on way too long and seem to be for no one's benefit. For example, I don't have any idea who is finding the many narrative interjections and editor's notes funny, particularly given how pervasive they are. On the other hand, there's a lot of really funny material in here, both in idea (the idea that Hitler constantly has to battle time travelers coming to kill him) and in the writing and things (in a sentence I never thought I'd find myself writing, Hitler is kind of the funniest part of this book). The style of the book, just as the style of all these flashback style issues, mimics a different time in comic history and it does a good job representing that time. Some really funny stuff in here but it's hard to really outright recommend this one because it is kind of hard to get through with all of the unnecessary stuff.

Guardians of the Galaxy 13
Bendis (w) and Pichelli and Marquez (a) and Ponsor (c)

Jean has appeared in the middle of the fight and announces that she understands that she's been the Phoenix and they're right to be upset about it. However, she says, it's not like anyone else would have been able to control the Phoenix either so it's ridiculous to put her on trial when the Phoenix was always going to come and always going to be an unstoppable force. On top of that, the Shi'ar killed her entire line on the off-chance it might help, which isn't sitting well with Jean and she fights Gladiator using newfound power, an ability to meld her telepathic and telekinetic powers together, rather in the way that Psylocke does but maybe even bigger because anything goes, right? Oracle finally calls the fight off mid-battle and rebukes everyone, but it does the job of making sure everyone keeps away from one another, though Scott uses the opportunity to threaten at Gladiator for a while. They all go their separate ways and, upon returning home, Kitty kisses Peter Quill because I'm so mad and Scott announces that he's going into space with his dad and Kitty continues to be an ineffective professor and I'm still so mad.

Hey guys, if you like regular Bendis stuff and double-page spreads, you'll absolutely love this issue. That's about what I can say for this because I'm really having some trouble wrapping my mind around it. Bendis is doing so much to write his own history (as he is wont to do) that he's making things more and more ridiculous. On top of that, his go-to relationship stuff is always love triangles and, hey guys, I'm real sick of them, about as sick of them as I am of Bendis choosing the character he likes the best and flooding them with girls. This also continues to make it known that Kitty is perhaps the worst choice for mentor of these kids as she continues to show literally no control over them despite being completely capable in whatever other role she takes on in other books. GUYS. I'm really frustrated. If you like this book, I really am happy for you and I hope that you continue to do so. I'm also hoping that GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY returns to the state it had been at before - it was certainly a slightly better book than ALL-NEW X-MEN and it's very clear that this TRIAL OF JEAN GREY crossover has been altogether too permeated with ALL-NEW X-MEN to really land with me. It also goes to my theory that Bendis is better writing solo titles than team books, at least in my view of him, and so adding multiple teams to this one didn't help anything for me.

All-New X-Men 24, All-New X-Factor 4

All-New X-Men 24
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)

J-Son, King of the Spartax empire, interrupts Gladiator's tribunal to ask why Jean Grey has been put on trial for crimes she hasn't committed and why he'd still be going after her even after he's done so much to harm her, like hunting down her family to destroy any sort of genealogical attraction the Phoenix felt to Jean Grey. Of course, this leads to a delay in the trial and to a very angry Jean Grey. She's escorted back to her cell while Gladiator and J-Son argue but she breaks away from her captors, escaping into the city. Meanwhile, the Guardians, O5 X-Men, and Starjammers manage to secure a Shi'ar ship with the aid of Angela and fly it down to the planet, hoping to go unrecognized. They land and find themselves immediately discovered by Gladiator and his Imperial Guard. They quickly get into a fight before Jean emerges and asks to be brought back in and tried as a murderer.

It continues to be a little hard to review this book (and a good deal of Bendis' books, but the difficulty increases steadily the more characters are involved. I should make a graph) because my problems with the dialogue and the interactions and the tone and the double page spreads and everything else is already so well-documented. There's probably something deeper I could say about the fact that nothing changes in the style of so many of his books from issue to issue but it seems petty to complain about that; clearly if Bendis is popular, he's going to keep writing in that style and putting out books that fit that formula. So maybe one of my issues with this whole series and everything else that's come out surrounding this in the last year is that it's all so boring to me. I very rarely have found Jean Grey interesting, I tend not to be too connected to the Phoenix as a whole but particularly Jean Grey is uninteresting in the hands of many writers, and she and Cyclops, the oatmeal of the superhero community, are really at the center of this series, just like Cyclops is the center of UNCANNY X-MEN. Of course, it doesn't help that I have had real misgivings about the conceit of ALL-NEW X-MEN since it launched and I am getting more and more sick of stories about "can we kill an innocent person to stop crimes they may commit?" which means that, at least for right now, literally nothing about this book is working for me. Okay, and there IS something to be said about the fact that the format of these books never seems to change and I don't feel invested in ANY of these characters, partly because I know they all must get back to the past at some point and because I just haven't been given a reason to care about any of them yet. Too much to complain about in so little time.

All-New X-Factor 4
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Rosenberg (c)

X-Factor has discovered that Gambit's old associate Nil was the one responsible for taking considerable funds from Serval Industries and that he did it using a a very damaged Danger, former X-Man. Now she seems to have no memories and a distinct desire to kill her captor. Gambit, who has the closest semblance to a relationship with her on the team, tries to talk her down to no avail before Polaris destroys her body with her powers. However, Danger can inhabit other mechanical forms and quickly inhabits the team's ship to preserve herself and continue to fight. Her body rebuilds itself and she transfers back into that, ready at last to kill Nil, who finally offers himself up in the hopes it will save the island. Gambit refuses to allow it though and jumps on Danger again, this time kissing her before she can strike at anyone. Somehow, this restores her to herself enough for her to recognize Gambit and stand down. The team convince Nil to give back the money he took and they all leave with Danger in tow. Without discussing it with the rest of the team, Gambit promptly offers her a spot with X-Factor.

Okay, so let's get the compliments out of the way first. The issue moves pretty well. Peter David has a tendency to chew scenery a bit and load up dialogue with exposition and it happens here to an extent but, despite that, the issue moves quickly enough, keeping the action intense enough to merit a very action-based issue. There are, of course, still some flaws after that. The big one is the cliché yet also inexplicable return of Danger's memories after a kiss from Gambit, who admits himself that he never had any sort of romantic link to the robot, the living embodiment of the Danger Room. They had spent time together in various X-meetings and the like but I don't even think they've had a particularly close bond at any point. And yet, here we are, as the issue winds down, with Gambit kissing a robot and it having enough of an impact on that robot that her memories return and her homicidal rage is quelled. It's simultaneously a giant cliché and a deus ex machina, all wrapped neatly into one package. I think that the interesting things that are happening in this book are getting somewhat overlooked by moments like that and some of the exposition pieces. For example, I think David is developing something very interesting with Polaris but I think it's going to be hard to get to it if the book can't get past some of the set pieces. I'd also like to see a little bit more happening with Gambit and Quicksilver. It's a hard book to judge right now because we're only four issues in so there hasn't been a lot of time to really get into it with some of the characters and still tell compelling stories but I'd like it to at least go one way or the other. This story wasn't compelling enough (it basically boiled down to "Danger is crazy for some reason and Gambit's kiss made the crazy go away") and it ended up just taking away from the book as a whole. Still, four issues in isn't unusual for a book to still be finding its footing.

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 5, Guardians of the Galaxy 12

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 5
Bendis (w) and Bagley and Hennessy (a) and Keith (c)

Kitty Pryde is prepped and ready to go in the fight against Galactus. She grows to giant size and goes after Galactus, providing the rest of the Ultimates with the distraction they need. Reed Richards launches a little ship towards Galactus and, as the world-eater begins to retaliate against Kitty, it flies behind him and opens a portal to the Negative Zone. Galactus begins to be pulled in, along with Kitty, as Reed preps to shut the portal. Spider-Man and Sue Storm race to catch up to and save Kitty despite the fact that, as Reed puts it, she knew her chances of survival. The pair of them catch up to Kitty and start trying to pull her back but the pull of the Negative Zone is strong. Galactus is going in first but it won't be long before it pulls the whole city in piece by piece as Galactus struggles against it. Fortunately, the deus ex machina comes in the form of actual deus Thor, who flies straight at Galactus with enough power to push him into the portal. With Spider-Man, Sue, and Kitty still fighting the pull, Reed goes to shut the portal down. Tony stops him for a moment, begging him to give Thor a chance to come out of it, but ultimately relents and Reed closes it down. With the threat gone and the city left to rebuild, Storm finds Captain America's shield in the wreckage, but with no sign of a body.

So this is it for Cataclysm after what feels like a really long time. It's a solid issue and the end of a pretty good event as a whole (though, and this isn't anybody's fault, it seems as if this solution is exactly the same as the solution at the end of the video game Lego: Marvel Superheroes, an immensely frustrating game only because of how broken it is but ultimately fun - this is my review of it, tucked away inside of a review of a comic. Maybe I'll really review it at some point. LOOK, whatever). Given that this is the Ultimate Universe, it's very surprising how few casualties there were in Galactus' would-be world-ending attack. Granted, Galactus is very much, more than anyone else in probably any universe, an all-or-nothing sort of villain, but I think we only really saw the death of Vision and maybe Punisher? Everyone else survived, after a manner of speaking, though the fate of Captain America is still up in the air (I'm going to go ahead and guess that if they didn't show a body this issue they're never going to, not until he's shown to still be alive) and Thor is trapped in the Negative Zone. Neat stuff with a good amount of potential as the Ultimate Universe does indeed survive and continue.

Guardians of the Galaxy 12
Bendis (w) and Pichelli, S. Immonen, and von Grawbadger (a) and Ponsor (c)

The Guardians and all-new X-Men have met up with the Starjammers, shocking a young Cyclops to his core as he comes across his father for the first time since he saw their plane blown up. Of course, for Corsair this isn't the first time he's seen one of his sons since but it's the first time he's seen him so young. All of this is covered and Scott has a lot to deal with as he runs into some new emotional ground and has to work his way through it with X-23, who comes to give him a hug. They've reached the Shi'ar throne world and found their defenses high as a whole ton of Shi'ar have gathered at the planet. Coming soon, too, will be J-Son, head of the Spartax empire and father of Peter Quill as he's received word that, despite his previous announcement to all the planets and races out there, the Shi'ar have meddled with Earth and the Guardians are heading for them. Meanwhile, Gladiator believes that the X-Men, though they may even be aware of Jean Grey's disappearance, won't get there before a decision is reached about Jean's fate. She's not helping her case as she continues to lash out and yell about her innocence as the trial commences.

There are...interesting parts to this storyline. On the one hand, it feels like trying to do too much, throwing the Starjammers into this story after years on the outskirts of the Marvel Universe and really only to show young Scott his father again. Sure they may play a bigger role but it feels like such a weird time to throw them in except as a plot device. By the same token, sending the Spartax there to further J-Son's demands that Earth be left alone makes sense to the story at large but it may also be one too many moving parts. Finally, I still don't particularly care for the driving plot behind this story. Putting aside my many complaints about the O5 X-Men being in the present, I just can't bring myself to care about another story right now where someone is charged with possible crimes from their future. It's been done a lot and it can be done really, really well and it's been done a lot recently and sometimes pretty well. Here, though, it's not as compelling and it's weirdly timed, coming right off of BATTLE OF THE ATOM, which dealt very much with the same sort of ideas, AGE OF ULTRON, which dealt very much with the same sort of ideas, and INFINITY, which dealt with Gladiator and the Shi'ar finding immense respect for Earth and its people. Makes me not love this event as a whole, though there are parts that may work in the end. Hopefully the parts are enough to justify the sum.