Cyclops 1, Savage Wolverine 18

Cyclops 1
Rucka (w) and Dauterman (a) and Sotomayor (c) and Caramagna (l)

Scott Summers has left his team behind in order to figure out his life in space with his newly discovered father, the space pirate Corsair. Also in Corsair's Starjammers are Corsair's girlfriend Hepzibah, and aliens Korvus, Ch'od, Sikorsky, and Raza Longknife (as well as Cr'eee, whose role I don't want to categorize as "crew member"). Scott has interacted with all of them in varying degrees but wishes that he'd spent more time with his father as the issue starts. He'll get his chance, though, as the Starjammers successfully fight off a Badoon ship and capture it for themselves, with Corsair making the decision that he and his son will take the ship (meant to be driven with a crew of two) and he'll show Scott some of the wonders of the galaxy he's explored.

Story
It's a nice little father-son tale to kick things off. So many heroes in the Marvel Universe can be boiled down to "daddy issues" so it's nice to see Scott get a chance to connect with his, even if it's a bit of a strange circumstance. There are little hints here and there throughout the book that Scott is learning a lot about his surroundings and the people with him, happily taking in any and all information he can. The Badoon strike doesn't really constitute a giant threat as it's just our means to get from one spot to another in this first issue, but it serves its purpose well. There's no hint of a bigger ongoing story just yet, with this issue primarily establishing Scott's new world and the way he's feeling about it all. 4/5

Character
Scott has a lot of time for introspection aboard the ship and it's fairly worthwhile introspection. Obviously he cares that he gets to have a relationship with his thought-dead father and that he gets to carve out a little spot in his life but there are also signs that point to the idea that he's running away from his problems on Earth as much as he's trying to explore space. He's seen his future, both his own personal future and the future of the people he loves, and it's all scared him. Now he's found at least a temporary leave from it and he's taken it. We also get some characterization from Corsair and the Starjammers in varying degrees, enough for us to make some early judgments about them though they're not the focus of this issue. Solid work by Rucka to get us onboard with the series as a whole. 5/5

Writing
The writing is solid, both in the dialogue and in Scott's personal narrative and his letters to Jean. I tend to get skeptical of people writing for children because I think it's so easy to go too hard one direction (making them too childish) or the other (making them too adult) and it's very hard to find that medium but, for all intents and purposes, Rucka seems to be doing a good job of it here. The pacing is pretty good, particularly picking up in the fight scene and then managing to slow again a bit as things return to normal. Good work starting everything off. 5/5

Art
Dauterman does a pretty good job throughout the issue, not an easy task considering how many diverse characters are in this book. Still, he manages to draw them all well and draw them with some level of emotion. There are also a couple of nice bits here and there where you can see Scott or another character peeking in from the background inquisitively as some other important thing is going on in the foreground. Nice little touches like that can go a long way to building a series. 5/5

Miscellaneous
The series is off to a good start. It's maybe not my favorite book out there and it didn't necessarily blow me away on issue one (that's a hard ask for every single book and I don't expect, I'm just trying to temper my rating) but it certainly did what it set out to do.

Total score: 5/5


Savage Wolverine 18
Van Meter (w) and R. Ellis (a) and Redmond (c) and Petit (l)

The year is 1963 and Logan has stopped in the southwest at a bar on his way traveling through the country. Though he keeps to himself, he overhears a few farmers and other laborers talking about how their immigrant help has begun to take the trains out to California and come back with all sorts of ideas about how much they should be paid and about unions and so on and so forth. The idea doesn't sit well with the white farmers and they get to discussing how to intimidate their hired help to stop them from acting on such ideas. Wolverine leaves at this point, still headed out of town, but he ends up getting turned around and has to stay with one of the farmers, far more sympathetic to the immigrants. He spends the night there and learns a little more about their plight. The next morning, as the farmers move a tractor on the rails to detour the train past their little town, Wolverine strikes, protecting the leader of the movement and forcing the farmers to reconsider. The train comes and everyone who wanted to head to Sacramento leaves while Wolverine discovers that JFK has been assassinated.

Story
There are maybe a few too many moving pieces here and there, which tends to be the problem in a lot of single-issue stories. There's a lot to take in but Van Meter still manages to perform pretty admirably, making it all tie together well (though it doesn't necessarily come across that way when you're trying to summarize it quickly). It's a nice little story of a man with the power to make things happen making things happen and protecting people. It's a nice look into one of the smaller stories in Wolverine's life and it's worth telling, even if it was maybe a little cramped here. 4/5

Character
There are a number of characters who get screen time in this issue so there's not a lot of time to develop any one of them more than another. Still, Van Meter makes sure that we have enough of an understanding of these characters to understand the larger situation and the stakes of the issue, which is really all you can ask from a single-issue, particularly in a series like this where we're not really making huge strides on understanding who Logan is or how he's changing, we're seeing moments from his past that were just pretty cool moments. Logan keeps in character and performs the way we'd expect him to, which is really all we can ask from this one. 4/5

Writing
The writing is solid. As I intimated above, things are a little cramped in the book just because there's so much story and so little time to get it out but it comes across strongly enough. Even without knowing too much of the history of the time, you can really get a sense of everything that's happening and why without too much effort on Van Meter's part. Hopefully she'll get a chance to do more work with Marvel soon. 5/5

Art
Like the writing, the art is solid. The emotions are conveyed pretty strongly and the action, limited though it is, works well too (plenty of Wolverine's claws and silhouettes and what have you). I wouldn't call it astonishing work but then again, art is pretty subjective. It works for this story. 4/5

Miscellaneous
Another solid book from this series. Looking forward to Gail Simone's story next.

Total score: 4/5

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.

All-New X-Men 23, All-New X-Factor 3

All-New X-Men 23
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and Von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)

The ANXM find themselves in space alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy in the quest to find Jean Grey. They know that it was the Shi'ar who took her and have been tracking the Shi'ar ship but it's not gone unnoticed. The two factions quickly get embroiled in a space battle with various members of the Guardians deploying to fight the Shi'ar in space and others and the ANXM staying behind in the ship, where they get unlikely support from the thought-dead space pirate Starjammers, led by the Corsair, Cyclops' father Christopher Summers. Meanwhile, Jean continues to be told that she's on trial for crimes committed by the Phoenix and ham-fistedly tries to explain that she hasn't committed these crimes.

I would, perhaps, be less averse to this series (despite its horrible conceit) if issues read as quickly as these summaries went. Instead, thanks to Bendis' famous back-and-forth dialogue, the issue ends up losing both its tension and its pace. Bendis tries to restore it with the Jean Grey bits, putting her up against a seemingly impregnable foe, and with the tension Scott is clearly feeling (Scott, who will soon star in his own ongoing soon from Greg Rucka), but it falls short when you have Bobby making non-stop jokes and Rocket making non-stop (grr) fake swears. Of course, there is a time for comic relief in the midst of a serious situation but it tends to be bad if it's impossible to separate the two. I've pretty much been solidly on record about my dislike for the conceit that the O5 X-Men are in the present in the first place but I'm willing to accept it if it still yields good stories. This one feels like an attempt to bring up the trope of "can you find someone guilty of crimes they haven't yet committed," a question asked constantly in comics and other media and one that Bendis himself has even asked in the last year in AGE OF ULTRON. So I'm not on board with this plot, I'm not on board with the dialogue, and I'm not really on board with a lot of these characters. Guess how I'm feeling with this book?

All-New X-Factor 3
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)

X-Factor is starting to get its bearing as Gambit moves into Serval Industries, Polaris continues to lead the team, and we discover that Quicksilver is working on behalf of Havok to keep an eye on Polaris and the entire set-up for the Avengers. Any sort of subtlety to the potential corruption or evil of Several Industries, too, can be put to rest as Snow reveals that he's planted a camera in Polaris' eye and as he offers a job to last issue's enemy, Dr. Hoffman. Of course, he doesn't tell any of the X-Factor members any of this and he sends them out on a new mission to find someone who hacked Serval's servers and made off with all sorts of plans and ten million dollars. Their physical trace leads them to the hidden Thieves' Guild island and Gambit immediately knows that Nil, the technomancer who threatened Gambit's leadership in his own title, must be behind it. They go and investigate and find that Nil has upped his abilities by hooking X-Man Danger up to his set-up. When Polaris frees her, Danger attacks all of them.

Plot-wise, there's a lot going on here. Serval is taking a very obvious step towards evil corporation even faster than I expected it would, Danger's a danger, and Quicksilver is, as Gambit suggested, a spy for an Avengers team. Aside from the introduction of Danger, though, all of these plot points are expected plot points, going so far as to even be plot points that Gambit, a character in the book we're reading, has expected them all along. In that way, the big plot shifts aren't super meaningful to us because they're plot shifts we've all been expecting and they're plot shifts only three issues deep, while we're still trying to figure out what this team is all about and who Serval is. Granted, we are only three issues in so these plot shifts may just be red herrings to cover bigger issues, but, on the face of it, it's not a terribly compelling set of plot twists. In addition, the writing ends up focusing a lot on quirky little quips and shoe-horned jokes. I'm a pretty big proponent of Peter David and his work (particularly his long work on the last X-FACTOR book) but this series isn't selling me quite yet. Of course, I'll keep reading it but that doesn't mean much coming from me, the guy who willingly reviews every single one of these jerk books.