A+X 5, All-New X-Men 8

A+X 5
Iron Fist + Doop: K. Immonen (w) and LaFuente (a) and Campbell (c)
Loki + Mr. Sinister: Gillen (w) and Bennet and Morales (a) and Charalampidis (c)

A+X stories are meant to have little substance to them, which makes them a little hard to review. Especially the Iron Fist and Doop one in this issue. There's a basic story wherein Doop and Iron Fist are trying to get back some sort of friend of Doop's, which is all kind of hard to follow because Doop speaks in an untranslated language that Iron Fist can apparently understand (or at least pretend to understand) and that the reader can't. My being unimpressed by Doop, who everyone in comics seems to love, continues unabated.

The second story is a little more meaty, with Loki teaming up with Mr. Sinister to steal back a genetic sample (hair) of Loki from Dr. Doom, who was trying to clone a Loki of his own to match Ragnarok, the Mr. Fantastic-created Thor clone from Civil War and currently appearing in Dark Avengers. Sinister doesn't trust Loki but wants the the DNA for himself; as the foremost geneticist in history, he feels he can push homo superior a little past where it is now with some Asgardian mix. As Loki allows him to take the hair, he reveals to the audience that Doom would have likely been able to make a clone, given enough time, but that Sinister will find he bit off more than he can chew because, as opposed to even Thor, there are things in Loki that go far beyond his philosophies. Interesting idea. That's it. That's all I've got.

All-New X-Men 8
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Garcia (c)

I'm a little burned out on this series already. I came out of this one trying to think of what I was going to write and nothing sprung to mind. I guess the idea that Jean is willing to read and alter people's minds is a big step. Everything else was inconsequential. I don't know, I'm still skeptical of the whole concept of this book so I kind of can't get myself worked up over anything that happens in it. This whole issue, too, felt like another step sideways instead of forward. We know Warren wants to go back to his time and that he's scared by whatever has happened to him in the future that has seemingly erased his whole personality and left it as Angel. We also know that the Avengers and X-Men are tense right now. I don't know, it all just seems like we never move ahead, we move to the side at every potential step. I think that's, to an extent, something that happens in comics. You have a really long-form medium that requires you to put out a book every month or so and you're eventually going to stutter step a little bit. However, since issue two or so I feel like we've been stutter-stepping. I talked about, in my review of Venom 31, that an issue without much action to move forward is great sometimes. It's necessary. You can't just keep throwing action at us because it's going to lead us to a spot where action is all we know so you have to keep upping that action or you stagnate with the action you have. This is kind of the opposite of that. All-New X-Men has been avoiding action at seemingly every turn. Even when there is action (like in this issue, Warren and Angel fight Hydra at Avengers tower), it's action that doesn't push story along. Like I said, even before this issue, we knew Warren wanted to go home and we knew that he was afraid of how he became the Angel he sees in the present. We don't need a fight scene to prove that. Then Bendis spends a couple pages (that feels like several) with Kitty and Iceman mocking Cap and Beast with a fake conversation. Then Scott says something. Then they're all blown away when Jean alters Warren's mind to keep him in the present. And that's where we are. If they had put that in a recap for a new issue, without releasing this issue, I would have believed it had already happened. I would have believed that I simply didn't remember the specifics but, as all the foundations were definitely there, it must have happened and I forgot about it. That's not a measure of a good comic.





ALSO: Blogger is having some troubles right now, it seems, so I may put off my last review of the week until tomorrow, when it will hopefully stop giving me error messages.