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.