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.