Sorry for the delay in getting reviews out today. Free Comic Book Day (which, it occurs to me, I maybe should have advertised more on this site but we're all past that now, aren't we?) took up a considerable portion of my day.
All-New X-Men 11
Bendis (w) and Immonen and von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)
I've been trying to narrow down some of my problems with this title and I think I'm making some progress. It doesn't make me like the book any more, it just helps me to try to figure out and point to a couple of real problems that I have instead of just shouting at this book. I've expressed my problems already with the time travel mess, but let's cover that again real quickly. It feels a little like, between this book and Age of Ultron, Bendis has just gotten his hands on some sci-fi and is trying to introduce groundbreaking ideas about time travel that aren't so much groundbreaking as they are well-trodden. Let's move away from that as quickly as we got into it though, moving instead to characters. I feel like no character seems to care what they're doing from one moment to the next so no character has a real arc to go through. It's why Wolverine started off threatening to execute young Scott and now just gets in people's faces. It's why Kitty Pryde thought that Beast was stupid for bringing the kids here, then offered to be their teacher, and is mad at Beast again now for bringing the kids here. It's why Beast brought the kids here and inexplicably now won't send them back. I get that the kids have said they want to stay here. I understand that. I even can understand an argument saying that Kitty has made the best of their decision to stay here and has offered to teach them to help them out if they're going to be staying here anyway. But I don't buy, for one second, that these guys couldn't have sent the kids back right off the bat. It goes beyond suspension of disbelief to genuinely impacting feelings on the story. When the whole story is hinged around the decision that children made to let the children stay, it's hard to ignore the fact that the adults 100% should have sent those kids back and were totally capable of it. Add to that the fact that EVERY ADULT seems to think that's true but never does anything about it, again, despite being capable of it.
The other problem right now is the same problem that I tend to have with Bendis, as stories get carried on far past the point of being interesting and just linger. I think that the same thing is happening in this book and, worse than that, between this book and Uncanny X-Men. So we're getting a lot of the same story across both books right now and it's just...it's not interesting. Maybe that's on me. Maybe I counted myself out too early and now I'm nitpicking. I don't know. I feel like certain parties are phoning it in on this book and I can't say I'm not one of them right now.
X-Men Legacy 10
Spurrier (w) and Davidson (a) and Rosenberg (a)
I like seeing different corners of the Marvel Universe, people and civilians we haven't seen before and getting an greater understanding of how the world outside of the superhero community works. In this case, we look at a scientific institute that is also a charity and whose founder is against mutants, but in a very specific and different way. Though he's lost several limbs and been paralyzed in mutant attacks before, he doesn't hate mutants in general. Instead of the normal anti-mutant spiel we normally get from villains, he's totally reasonable, even if he deserves not to be. David is expecting a little more out of him, in fact, because it's his institute that provided the pills a few issues ago to the Church of the Happy Host. The founder, Marcus Glove, truly seems to regret that fringe groups like that one got their hands on his mutant cure and are using it to promote extremism. Glove is perfectly frank about its uses and about what he believes and it's not unreasonable. He understands that mutants might be the next evolutionary step but he wholeheartedly believes that mutants are set to destroy the planet at some point. He's not necessarily wrong. Obviously it's hard to argue definitively that they will (though David rather agrees with him right now...more on that in a moment), but the signs seem to point that way. His pill blocks the brain from using its mutation. Nothing too painful, a little bit experimental and, Glove isn't shy to admit, clinical brain damage so it's certainly risky. But Glove comes off as a legitimately good guy who truly believes in what he's doing and has no reason not to. He's not forcing it on anyone, it's just an option. And David wants it. David made a deal with the Xavier in his head to see into his future and see if he really is destined to doom the mutant race. Spoilers: he is. There are very limited futures in which he doesn't doom the race and this pill seems to be one of them. The deal he made with the Xavier though is that Xavier gets control of his body for one minute at an undisclosed point later on. Exciting.
So yes, there are things building in X-Men Legacy and this is the first multi-issue arc that we've faced (even if it's just these two issues) since the first long arc. Blindfold kind of knows about it too though, as she's been using Cerebro to follow David without his knowledge. Will she stop him from shutting down his powers? Will she let him do it? Is she going to be more angry by the fact that he's trying to de-mutant himself or more angry that he's reading her brother's book? All sorts of questions and all sorts of places to go.
Ultimate X-Men 26
Wood (w) and Asrar and Vlasco (a) and Bellaire (c)
The Natural Resources arc continues to ramp up as General Ross comes to Utopia to inform Kitty that the US government has overruled President Cap's declaration of freedom for the mutants. General Ross doesn't want to attack the compound unprovoked and wants to go and see the place for himself and look Kitty in the eye as he tells her. He does so and it shakes him up, seeing someone who's the same age and kind of looks a bit like his niece. More than that, though, he's shaken up as an anti-mutant soldier decides that Kitty is a threat to attack Ross and fires on her. The bullet ricochets off of Ross, who tries to save Kitty, and she phases through it and through the ground. But now the terms are out there and Kitty knows what the government and army are expecting her to do. As a result, she welcomes back the more militant branch of mutants into her camp. That group, by the way, is getting more and more interesting as it seems like Psylocke is pulling all of the strings and not letting anyone know what her real purpose is. On top of that Jean is getting a little more supportive of Utopia and realizes that Tian's success hinges on the success of Utopia. She continues to go out to the woods to make calls back to Tian but Rogue has seen her calling home now. Lots of drama still out on the horizon.
The issue is simultaneously important for the future and interesting to read now. We're seeing more and more of Psylocke as she plays her own games to some mysterious end. It seems everything is going her way, as she has her hands on Mach Two and Jimmy, among others. The Tian plot is interesting and I like the idea that Jean kind of understands, despite her possible feelings about Utopia, that the two mutant civilizations are linked. Now we'll get to see how Utopia defends itself. Kitty is still insistent on a peaceful engagement but understands it might not be so easy. She's hoping they can simply defend themselves and not attack so that they can still prove mutants aren't a threat to everyday life while simultaneously not being walked all over. There are a lot of great and real questions in this series that are worth talking about and are good things to wonder about in a world that has mutants. Another good series.
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