All-New X-Men 30, Amazing X-Men 10, X-Men 18

All-New X-Men 30
Bendis (w) and Pichelli (a) and Gracia (c) and Petit (l)

X-23 and Angel escaped all the drama to go on a date and spend the night in one of Warren's rich person apartments and Laura admits to not remembering much of the last night and does NO ONE find this a really, really creepy story? It can't just be me, right? I don't pick up on things all that easily and so feeling really creeped out by this scene must make it pretty obvious, right? Okay, anyway, Emma wants to train Jean but there's prolonged bad blood between them because they both keep failing the Bechdel test and I think they're trying to figure out who fails it harder? That's the takeaway, I think. Anyway, they end up bonding? Is there a person who cares about this?

Okay, look, I'll be the first to admit I'm in a bad mood today but I read this comic last night, when I was in a mildly better mood (until after I read the comic). I tried working out all the "benefit of a doubt" ways to talk about this issue but the bad mood has ensured those have all gone out the window. I'll still start it the same way: I know that I tend to badmouth Brian Michael Bendis on this blog a lot because I don't really care for his style and I think his characters, save a couple, are fairly weak. I have no real desire to badmouth him. I do believe there are reviewers and critics out there who legitimately enjoy the mean part of the job or the controversy of attacking well-liked writers/directors/actors/whatever. I am most definitely not one of those people so I hate coming off attacky at anyone, but especially Bendis who is clearly well-liked and well-regarded (he's gone from a couple of prime AVENGERS titles to a couple of prime X-MEN titles, not to mention all his other past books). THAT SAID, I absolutely hate this series and I really, really hate this issue. I talked a lot above about the strange and terrible women in this issue but that didn't even talk about Kitty's weird relationship or scratch the surface of how poorly written and out of character I think Laura was or REALLY about how uncomfortable the idea that Laura couldn't really remember the night before and woke up in one of Warren's homes with him shirtless and had to have Warren describe the night for her. I'm REALLY uncomfortable about that. Let's not forget, too, that this is the second issue since Laura's joined up with the team (not that long ago) where a cover has featured her making out on a dude, which seems both wrong and odd. And I get that Emma and Jean have this built-in sexist rivalry between them in their history but wouldn't it be a thousand times more interesting if they had some other thing to talk about? Other than ol' just-right porridge Scott Summers? They're two of the most powerful telepaths ever (despite Emma's current situation) and they go to train and they're like "HEY, LET'S CONTINUE COMPETING OVER SCOTT" and then they spend some time locked in each other's minds and just stand up laughing together because, as one of the Stepfords puts it, they've bonded. I want to complain about how incredibly lazy it is to just have two psychics stare at each other for a panel and then come out going "we're pals now!" but I'd have actually accepted a completely silent issue with Pichelli art because I think it'd be far stronger than this.

Total Score: 1/5


Amazing X-Men 10
Kyle and Yost (w) and Barberi and Coello (p) and Wong and Coello (i) and Rosenberg (c) and Caramagna (l)

Wolverine (and much of Canada) has been transformed into a Wendigo and the X-Men are having some trouble dealing with these problems. They keep whacking Wolverendigo away while they plot and Alpha Flight shows up and everybody jokes around a bit while the Avengers watch the border (plus side, the curse doesn't extend beyond Canadian borders) and they need to bring the injured Talisman to a very specific place that leads to the spirit realm but when they take her there they find it's also full o' Wendigos. Maybe this isn't the time for jokes, Bobby?

There is something of a strange tonal shift in this issue as the plight of the Wendigo suddenly becomes a little less serious with all these pals coming together and having a good time. I'll be honest, I think if this is the tone you set up in the first issue or two of this arc then it totally works. But where the first issue or two of this arc had a really serious tone, this one doesn't quite stick the landing. Some of the dialogue and jokes aren't bad and, if it were maybe a little more sparse, I think there's a way this could hit a little better. Instead, it feels out of place and oddly unsympathetic. Seriously Rockslide, pull yourself together. This is why no one brings you to any of the fights or uses you in any of these books.

Total Score: 3/5


X-Men 18
Guggenheim (w) and Tolibao (p) and Tadeo and Yeung (i) and Mounts (c) and Caramagna (l)

The X-Men are fighting an airborne AIM virus by burning it out of the air when Abigail Brand calls them to request their presence. A not-dead/not-paralyzed but certainly comatose Deathbird has suddenly turned up in orbit and Brand isn't sure why and wants a team of 3/5 psychics, particularly ones with experience with Deathbird (who happens to be Rachel Grey's aunt by marriage) and the Kree, to check the situation out. She's also called in Cecilia Reyes to examine Deathbird. The whole thing, though, is interrupted when Sidrian Hunters attack the Peak, coming for Deathbird or, as Cecilia reveals, Deathbird's unborn child.

There are some interesting moments here and Guggenheim has a pretty good feel for the humor he wants to bring to the team. Sometimes, though, it overloads a little and the dialogue ends up slowing a bit more than you'd like, taking something away from the action and the story itself. Good dialogue, particularly good funny dialogue, should never really feel like a slog and while Guggenheim certainly  isn't writing poorly, parts of the issue start to drag. Still not a bad issue and it left me interested where the story would go.

Original Sin 3, Avengers World 7

Original Sin 3
Aaron (w) and Deodato (a) and F. Martin (c) and Eliopoulos (l)

While the Avengers in the immediate vicinity of the Orb (who, it turns out, was working alongside Oubliette's father Dr. Midas, all of which makes me quite glad I read Morrison's MARVEL BOY not too long ago) are sent reeling from the weight of their secrets (soon to be seen in all the tie-in books), the mysterious murder investigation boss's teams are spread out finding other such murders. Black Panther, Emma Frost, and Ant-Man examine bullets they've found while Punisher and Doctor Strange discuss the people who could shoot a target from such a huge distance. Meanwhile, Moon Knight, Winter Soldier, and Gamora explore space and find a trail of meteor-sized bullet casing that lead to a murdered sentient planet (not Ego the Living Planet, but similar enough that Gamora namedrops him). While Moon Knight and Gamora discuss how much this must narrow down the possible suspects, Bucky destroys their ship and teleports to Fury's base, where he's trying to glean more from the eye they've recovered. Winter Soldier proclaims that everyone has to pay for their sins and that there will be no more secrets before he shoots and stabs Fury and takes the eye.

In FEAR ITSELF, the last event he appeared in, Winter Soldier (at the time, Captain America) seemingly died in issue three. Now he returns to events as he seemingly murders someone in issue three of ORIGINAL SIN. There's a lot going on and plenty that's hinted at for us to read elsewhere (some pretty intense selling of the tie-ins as everyone starts to see their applicable secrets, with the most egregious being Thor yelling "BY THE SPIRES OF ASGARD, I HAVE A SISTER?") but the murder investigation and Bucky's apparent betrayal take center stage here. Like in any crime drama, it feels rather too early a reveal for Bucky to be the actual killer (not to mention that like, does he even know who the Watcher is?) but there's still clearly something pretty deep happening here. Also interesting is Fury's concern that everyone in the vicinity saw their secrets but he didn't see anything. Plenty happening, including a bit of less appealing salesmanship, but it's hard to read where this one will go next.

Total Score: 4/5


Avengers World 7
Spencer (w) and Caselli (a) and Mossa (c) and Caramagna (l)

Madripoor has lifted off the Earth on the back of an ancient dragon at the behest of Gorgon, who has defeated Shang-Chi while his teammates Falcon, Black Widow, and Wolverine try to calm riots on the street. Black Widow calls for extraction, saying it's futile to keep fighting there, while Falcon goes to find Shang. With no birds in the sky around them (what do you think Redwing does on his days off? Bird social worker?), it's up to Sam entirely to find the missing Avenger and he follows a drone leading away from the flying nation. The drone drops him at a giant airship hovering near by called the Circle (because it's circular). He enters and meets Xian Zheng, who informs him that the Circle is his ship and it's one of many new Chinese airships. He explains that China realized it had relied too much upon SHIELD and the Avengers when the war of the Builders struck and now they've put together their own force, called SPEAR, with their own team of heroes called the Ascendants including Weather Witch, Saber, Vector, Devastator, and the Monkey King (last seen in IRON MAN 2.0, I think). Zheng tells Falcon it's nothing that he need worry about, that they're all fighting for the same cause, just that the world looks to China for defense and protection and China hasn't provided it yet. He also asks Falcon to help deliver the message to the world, which he does by appearing on footage broadcast around the world with the new team.

Occasionally a series will delve into the politics of the world, moving away from the individual superheroes and the individual villains and giving us a look at the world that these heroes and villains have created and how it differs from ours. AVENGERS WORLD 7 is one of the times where such a look is smart and compelling. We've seen other country-sanctioned teams and loyal national heroes (Britain has the most obvious example but there are heroes in the Middle East and in Russia and in Japan and, well, pretty much everywhere our heroes occasionally visit) but there's nothing out there with the sort of power and reach that SHIELD has. Now we've taken a story that was interesting, featuring Gorgon raising Madripoor on the back of a dragon, and turned it into something else entirely, introducing SPEAR (the acronym is never explained by Zheng points out that there has always been the shield in the west and the spear in the east so, I mean, pretty much just a word, huh?). I like having Falcon run point on this because he's someone who can understand the need for something like this without feeling entirely threatened. He's worked with SHIELD, he's worked against SHIELD, and he understand the way the world is changing so he's skeptical and hesitant but ultimately willing to give this a shot. Cool idea overall, we'll have to see how this plays across the rest of this arc and the rest of the universe.

Total Score: 5/5

X-Men 14, Uncanny X-Men 21

X-Men 14
Wood (w) and C. Mann (p) and C. Mann and S. Mann (i) and Mounts (c) and Caramagna (l)

The Future has attacked two students, Primal and Sprite, and, in doing so, somehow broken past every defense that the X-Men have. Monet and Rachel tear off after Primal's shooter and track him to a train in an attempt to make a getaway. They manage to take him down before he can shoot himself, bringing him back to the school for questioning while Psylocke ups the mansion's defenses and Beast attempts to save the wounded. Storm calls everyone together to tell them that she's officially announced them as a team (AKA made it known to Wolverine) but her speech is interrupted when the Future strikes again shattering more defenses and breaking through where they were holding the original shooter. Storm's future daughter Kymera helps protect Shogo and trounces the shooter, who turns out to be a bomb, and the ensuing explosion complicates things further.

Story
The Future, despite his name, continues to be a frustratingly compelling villain, one who is able to inexplicably get past all of the mansion's many defenses and to remain hidden from even the talented psychics on the premises. Amid the fear of the Future is a story about the team forming and starting to work together as Storm begins to back down from her leadership position, allowing for more voices of dissent or more strategies and at least stalling the overthrow talk. Wood has always done a solid job at ramping up and balancing tensions and this issue is a prime example. 5/5

Character
There are a number of strong characters in this book and Wood should be praised for keeping their voices almost entirely distinct. It's the sort of book where you could focus on the words on the page and know who's speaking. The only time that that line gets a little muddied is with Rachel, who occasionally plays the side that's convenient to the advancing plot, though I'd also say that I'm not really sure I've read a really great Rachel Grey before and I'd say that I've read great versions of all of the other major characters elsewhere. 4/5

Writing
Wood bounces back and forth between locations and characters enough to make the book feel really fast-paced even when a lot of this issue is just fortifying defenses and reacting to last issue. It creates the sort of panicked and terrorized tone for the issue that allows the reader to begin to understand what the outlook is like at the school. Particularly effective with this is seeing Beast's full-on sadness at what's happening and his seeming inability to help the injured. 5/5

Art
Strong art from Clay Mann, as is typical. There's a nice panel as Ororo apologizes for her recent behavior and announces that they're officially a team where, though the camera is pulled back far enough that there's not much detail to the characters' faces, we get a good sense of the situation from the position and the posture of each character, with Storm fretting anxiously, Rachel listening o obediently, Monet with her arms-crossed, Psylocke with her hands on her hips, and Jubilee cradling Shogo. It's a nice characterization of all of them in the briefest of moments. 5/5

Miscellaneous
As in the last issue, the mini-story BROMO-SUPERIOR continues in this issue, again written by wood but with art from Phil Briones and colors from Matt Milla. It's fine, or whatever.

Total Score: 5/5


Uncanny X-Men 21
Bendis (w) and Bachalo (p) and Townsend, Irwin, Mendoza, Olazaba, and Vey (i) and Bachalo (c) and Caramagna (l)

Cyclops and Magik have lost control of their powers upon arriving at the Jean Grey School to question Beast on whether or not he's tracking their movements with Cerebro. The mutants at the mansion subdue the pair just as Dazzler arrives and demands to take Cyclops into custody. Beast fights her on it, convinced something is wrong with them and realizing he's best suited to understand what and who is attacking them. Maria Hill steps in and eventually sides with Beast, giving him an hour to study Cyclops. The mysterious entity behind the attacks sees his opportunity and uses the SHIELD helicarriers to attack the school while Beast begins to study Cyclops in his lab and realizes who is behind everything. Meanwhile, Magneto frees Dazzler in Madripoor and swears he'll help her find revenge.

Story
Though I thought that Cyclops' reason for coming to the Jean Grey School was kind of stupid and convoluted (the dude's just going to keep making excuses to go there apparently and the more he does it the less of a dramatic "OH NO, LOOK WHO'S HERE" sort of a moment it is. Soon we'll just assume he's a part-time professor), you can see here why Bendis chose to send them. Though the ends don't necessarily justify the means, we're here to examine this issue and not the last one and the at ion of this issue is compelling enough. I do have some problems with the fact that this book can't seem to go more than a few issues without pulling in the other mutants or SHIELD or anything else, but we are moving quickly to our mysterious adversary. The most compelling story of the issue, though, is Emma Frost's refusal to completely give up on Scott as a love interest. Just kidding, of course it's not that, I could not care less about that. I swear, every time I start to fight for this book, I'm reminded that I'm actually annoyed by it. No, it's Magneto. His determination to get Dazzler out and stop the MGH production is a nice arc for his character and it boosts this up from the 3/5 I was going to give this issue after remembering Emma Frost's contribution. 4/5

Character
Like last time, I'm going to fall back on Magneto's arc here because there's not a lot else to look at. There's Emma Frost and I continue not to care even a little bit about that relationship. Magneto's stuff is strong, I'm still not particularly into SHIELD's involvement though Maria Hill's agreement to let Beast check out Cyclops was both interesting and baffling. 3/5

Writing
Bendis reins in the back-and-forth dialogue here which I really appreciate since there's a lot of fighting and a lot of exploding in this issue and I really hate it in those moments. I think the tone of the book works pretty well but I'd have to put that to the colors as much as anything. Still, writing didn't hurt that and that's sometimes just as important as actively fostering it. 5/5

Art
As I said, I think the colors really helped the art in this one. Bachalo's art is typically impressive and it's extremely consistent. This issue loses a point in art for a weird gratuitous upskirt of one of the girls in the Jean Grey School (I'd call her Surge but I've not known Surge to wear a skirt and I'm unclear if she's there or not. Who knew I'd have to choose between blue-haired girls?). 4/5

Miscellaneous
I think this book has the ability to shine through some of the problems I've had with it but it keeps barely scratching that surface instead of leaping over it.

Total Score: 4/5

All-New X-Men 27, X-Force 5

All-New X-Men 27
Bendis (w) and Immonen (p) and Von Grawbadger (i) and Gracia (c) and Petit (l)

The Evil X-Men Brotherhood (the ones from the future who messed with everything in BATTLE OF THE ATOM and who need a better distinguishing name) have found the Xavier School and begun to attack, with Raze, the shapeshifting son of Mystique and Wolverine (it would seem), posing as a wounded X-23 and stabbing the healer first. Things get crazier as future Jean Grey and Charles, the psychic son of Mystique (posing, at the time, as Moira MacTaggert) and Xavier, launch a psychic attack on everyone at the school, even taking control of one of the Cuckoos to keep their power up. Only past Jean Grey, Emma Frost, and Cyclops remain hidden from the attack. When the evil brotherhood starts to get a location on young Jean, Emma knocks her out to keep them all protected, though it sends Jean into a state where Charles can talk to and threaten her.

Story
I'm doing everything I can to see this as a new story, something removed from BATTLE OF THE ATOM which I so loathed. It is extremely difficult to do that, though, as everything still seems to be linked to BOTA because that's the only time these characters have appeared. As such, the story right now is limited and we can only assume this group is here because they didn't like the way things turned out in the aftermath of BOTA and seek to rectify it (or to send the ANXM back to the past. There's more history given for Charles and Raze though not really enough yet to explain why they're both so mad, though that's surely coming. This issue then is dedicated mostly to the siege on the Xavier School and kind of makes you think "hey, maybe these kids aren't getting enough training in?" Okay, maybe that's not fair, they're facing two Mystique-mothered children with Wolverine and Xavier all mixed in there and another Jean Grey, on top of some others. Still, we'll have to wait a little longer before we can get a full sense of this story. 4/5

Character
The biggest character moments are for the enemies, as we do see a bit of flashback history for Charles and Raze. There's a bit here and there for other characters through the dialogue, but they seem to be our focus right now. Cyclops' team's healer, Christopher Muse (I had to look his name up because I do not have any sort of connection to these kids), gets a teeny bit of characterization and story as he freaks out over dying (understandable) and as we learn that he can heal himself, even if it's unconsciously. Still, not really an issue for characterization of our main team but it's kind of weird to me that this book has shifted so much into being a book about both the O5 team and Cyclops' team when it had originally been the O5 team and where Cyclops' team already has a book. 3/5

Writing
Still a bit of back-and-forth dialogue which, as ever, feels incredibly out of place in big and tense fight scenes. There are times to let off the gas with dialogue and a big fight scene always seems like one of them. There's also opportunity to keep everyone suspicious and paranoid and tense and Bendis touches on it a bit but I think the jokes and the quips kind of get in the way of that tone really establishing, which is a shame because the fight, for however forced it kinda feels, is still an interesting one as it develops (it's hard not to view the convenience of a team that has two sons of Mystique, one with Wolverine DNA and one with Xavier DNA, fairly cynically but that doesn't mean the fight still can't be interesting). 3/5

Art
I always like Stuart Immonen's art and I've come to really appreciate Marte Gracia's colors. I think the art really helps the book in a lot of ways and kind of draws the eye away from any problems in the story. 5/5

Miscellaneous
I don't know if you guys could tell but I'm having a lot of trouble separating this from BOTA.

Total Score: 3/5


X-Force 5
Spurrier (w) and J. Molina (a+c) and Sabino (l)

X-Force is prepped for an attack on Volga after getting all the information they could out of the dead Aggasiz. It turns out Aggasiz, a mutant who could travel through other dimensions, had worked for Volga stealing all sorts of weapons-tech from other universes in exchange for his kidnapped family's safety. The most problematic tech he stole was a sort of enhanced super soldier serum, which gave people incredible powers but also faded after a certain amount of time, killing the soldiers who used it. For Volga, that's not so much a problem, as he realizes country's will still use the serum and just come back for more when their batch dies (because he's truly horrible). This is, it seems, also what happened to Marrow (though she, clearly, didn't die) and, as she attacks Volga's compound, she wonders why she remembers so little of her experience. However, as her narrative rattles on and she continues referencing whoever she's talking to as "baby," it dons on her that she was pregnant before Alexandria and that they killed her baby. Psylocke manages to figure out what's happening right as it happens and makes sure Fantomex and Cable are covered as Marrow lashes out, wrecking through Volga's troops. Volga himself finally comes out and talks to Marrow, revealing that she knew the risks going in but that she volunteered in the hopes of getting her powers back. With Marrow out of the fight (now paralyzed with countless emotions) Volga's men knock out Psylocke and Fantomex and take all three with them as Volga reveals that they injected Cable with the soldier serum at Alexandria too and wonders why he hasn't died yet. It's not so big a problem, though, since he has a way to expedite the process and affixes it to Cable before tossing him off his HQ, allowing him to explode below while Volga ends up with the three other mutants.

Story
Good god, there's a lot happening here. Spurrier's a master at seeding little bits here and there throughout an arc and then watching it all hit home in one big reveal. It's Marrow's turn for narrative again this time and we get to see the pieces all start unraveling as her narrative leads us right to the fight and X-Force's loss. There's so much happening as we learn about how Marrow and Cable have powers again and we learn a good deal more about Volga (who is, by his own admission, a "comedy Russian bad guy") and the story of our team propels to an entirely new place. It's a pretty dark book and it's a pretty deep story and it's rather a thrill to watch it all come together (or come apart, as the case may be). 5/5

Character
Plenty is explained about a couple of our characters, which would be probably enough to boost this character score up by itself, but X-FORCE goes further than that. Each of these guys have such a distinct personality and we get a chance to see them all in their distinct roles, as Cable commands and leads, Marrow fights until the shocking news and then fights even harder and then shuts down, and Psylocke does what she can to keep everything moving the right way. The team knew about Marrow's baby and knew that the memories hadn't been removed from her, she'd repressed them because she couldn't deal with them. Psylocke tries to calm Marrow down when she learns and then tries to keep Volga from revealing the full truth to Marrow because she knows the impact it will have. Lots happening with every character, even with the noticeably quieter Fantomex, who continues reeling from last issue's crushing defeat wherein he started to see that maybe he wasn't the best there ever was at everything. Here he stays quieter, claiming to have a headache, and finds himself even more miffed as his bullets fail to kill the soldiers. Volga gets tons of characterization and it's totally over the top but he recognizes how over the top it is so Spurrier gets his chance to combat that accusation before it can land. Solid stuff all around, just an incredible book and we're only five issues in. 5/5

Writing
I have to think that all the writing I've done on this post already has told enough about the writing of this issue. I'll just mention that the pacing is really great, starting a little slower as they wait to attack, then instantly getting into it but in the same sort of balanced way that traditional superhero fights go until the revelation about Marrow's baby, which brings everything to a halt before really escalating the pace and, again, dropping it when Volga makes his big reveal. Between that and the wonderful Marrow narrative, Spurrier's got us right in his pocket. 5/5

Art
Jorge Molina steps in to do the art on this one and I think the change works pretty well, though I've liked Rock-He Kim's art (which is, I think, probably exactly what I said last issue, which also featured Molina on art). His Marrow is a little softer, even prettier, so that when she bones out (there's got to be a better description than that for her power) it's more abrupt and more fearsome. It's particularly effective in this issue when she also withdraws back into herself and we can see how small and devastated she is. Really strong stuff. 5/5

Miscellaneous
Geez, what a book.

Total Score: 5/5

2014's event "Original Sin" revealed

Quick note to say that CBR has confirmed this year's big event at Marvel (or, the way things have been going lately, presumably one of its big events) will be ORIGINAL SIN, by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato. ORIGINAL SIN will center around the murder of the Watcher and the villain who stole his secrets, harkening back a bit to Ed Brubaker and Javier Pulido's 2011 POINT ONE one-shot, which saw a couple of spies trying to steal secrets from the Watcher. The series will be eight issues itself and will have its share of tie-ins (those tie-ins haven't been revealed yet but Aaron promises they'll be a bit different than other tie-ins have worked in the past, swearing that these tie-ins wouldn't exist if they didn't have something important to say). ORIGINAL SIN will feature a big cast of both A-listers and people more out of the spotlight (Aaron says, for example, characters like Emma Frost, Black Panther, Punisher, and Ant-Man will all play big roles) and will focus on solving the murder of the Watcher by "head detective" Nick Fury, as in original Nick Fury (excited about that, anyway). I'm fairly on the fence about this one and will just have to wait until May to start forming an opinion.

A+X 15, Inhumanity: The Awakening 1

Sorry about the lateness of this post! Busy week and I couldn't get my hands on A+X until late so I almost skipped this post entirely. Look for my picks of the week shortly.

A+X 15
Dr. Strange and Beast - Nitz (w) and Smallwood (a and c)
Captain America and Cyclops - Duggan (w) and Yardin and C. Smith (a) and Mossa (c)

In our first story, Doctor Strange teams with Beast to investigate a strange and somewhat haunted yoga session in Greenwich. Beast, given his attachment to science, believes it to be alien technology while Strange, of course, believes it to be magic. The two bicker as they visit Dormammu's realm to find more. There, they meet their counterparts from another dimension, Dr. S of the Strange-Men and Sorcerer Supreme Beast, both of whom want to destroy the 616 because of the yoga business. Our Strange and Beast distract them and get away. Given a moment's respite, they realize this must be the work of the Impossible Man and visit him and manage to convince him to set things right. They return back to their home world, neither of them any more accepting of the other's business. Not a bad little story. Definitely fun, even if it treads a lot of the same ground A+X has been treading (people with differences bickering, mostly).

Meanwhile, the Cap + Cyclops storyline continues as they bring the shot-Skrull back to their base. The LMD there informs the two that the Skrull is still alive, having shifted his organs in his body right before being shot and that he is, in fact, conscious. The Skrull wants fast food at a specific restaurant but promises that afterwards he'll take them to a Skrull secret base. Cap and Cyclops each call in their own help, with Cyclops calling Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos to help give them a telepathic edge and Cap calling in Ant-Man to help destroy the Skrulls guns, as the fast food place ends up being the secret base and they attack pretty immediately. Ant-Man and Emma agree to tag along for the rest of the adventure. Together, they all realize that part of the plan of Cadre K is to take over the cattle industry and poison the meat. The story is starting to gain some legs but, more importantly, the characters are starting to take some shape. They still snap at each other here and there but they're getting more tolerant of their work, which is pretty neat and leads to some nice little lines here and there. Not a bad issue overall, two fairly fun stories. More than I could say about other issues of the series.

Inhumanity: The Awakening 1
Kindt (w) and Davidson (a) and Beaulieu (c)

Following right on the heels of INFINITY THE HUNT, this mini-series picks up with the students of the American schools cleaning up in New York after INFINITY. Pixie is monitoring social networks and realizes there's a newly-Inhuman girl who may be about to kill herself from bullying and her transformation. Pixie leads Quentin Quire, Striker, and Finesse to the girl and see her flying high in the sky. Pixie realizes that she's not flying, she's falling, and saves her. The girl tells her story through Instagram pictures and their comments, where she's been examining her life even before transforming into a feathered and winged Inhuman, which she also documents. Her jerk brother's friends tortured her at one point and she's harassed by a troll online and it's all become to ouch for her. Striker talks about his time in the spotlight and what it's meant for him and how he deals with it and it seems to straighten her out a bit. She reveals to them that her brother also cocooned and they go to see him only to find that he's burst out and is now wreaking havoc in the world.

Followers of this blog will probably notice that I did not care for INFINITY THE HUNT and it seems like I may care for this mini-series EVEN LESS. This one is obsessed with showing all of the recent events (INFINITY and, now, INHUMANITY) through the eyes of social media. So on top of the story being told through a series of Instagram pictures and their comments (not to mention through her narration over the pictures), there's a running Twitter feed at the top of every single page. It's unbearable. There are probably people out there who would be more forgiving about this than I am but I absolutely hate the layout of this issue. Here's the thing: YOUNG AVENGERS has done something like this throughout their series. Each issue starts with a Tumblr-like recap page, which works for this series and, importantly, is one mostly-inconsequential page that's loaded with neat little bits and, again, are not important overall. They also did a set of Instagram pictures to explain away their in-between-issues adventures. It worked and it made sense. Here there's way too much of it and it permeates the entire book. I read online someone saying that it was a powerful book that addressed bullying and other important teenage problems but I can't even really say that. There's obviously a lot of bullying, but it's almost too much a parody of bullying to be taken seriously and it seems like Kindt wants to do too much else in the book to really fully examine bullying or something. Just...not a fun book, you guys. The downside of actually getting my hands on A+X was that I suddenly found myself needing to both read the rest of this issue and review it without just dutifully ignoring it. Oh well, right?

Uncanny X-Men 15, Cable and X-Force 17

Uncanny X-Men 15
Bendis (w) and Anka (a) and Beredo (c)

The girls of the New Xavier School have realized that they don't have much by way of clothes or entertainment or whatever else they might need and so convince their female professors to take them shopping. Emma is excited about it and provides the needed money while Ilyana and Kitty are ambivalent but willing to go anyway. They go to London and shop and buy clothes and talk for a while until sirens interrupt a meal. They follow the sirens to find cocoons popping up all over the city and the telepaths, scanning the mind of anyone they can reach, hear about the Terrigenesis bomb. They go to one of the nearby cocoons which has a transforming Latverian in it who comes out and, after a brief talk with the X-Men, knocks them all unconscious without trying. AIM shows up right after and takes the boy into their custody, excited that he seems to be able to take out a fleet of X-Men without even trying. The women eventually wake up and they leave the scene, realizing that the world is about to get more complicated.

An INHUMANITY tie-in here and one that, I suppose, helps illustrate this new event and shows us that Cyclops' team is aware of what's happening but doesn't do a ton else. There's a lot of dialogue here, as is typical in a Bendis book, but most of it doesn't really delve deeper into character than we've already been. Celeste doesn't like Jean and Jean doesn't really like that Celeste doesn't like Jean because of what she could become and Celeste actually doesn't like Jean because she shouldn't be in this time and so on and so forth. Beyond that, not much more is discussed beyond the women's desire to go shopping and some defensive lines from Bendis about how it's not sexist, they just like to go shopping is all. There's a lot of the back-and-forth dialogue that, again, serves to slow the book a lot while making every character sound the same and somehow, spectacularly, not adding anything to the book's story. Kris Anka picks up the art on this one and it's definitely the highlight of the issue. Anka's done good work on UNCANNY X-FORCE covers this run and he's done pretty killer character and costume design work recently (he also works on the excellent new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show on Nickelodeon so I've nothing but praise for him). Overall, the story is one you're probably reading everywhere else across the Marvel Universe right now and it's done better elsewhere and, if you're reading UNCANNY X-MEN, you won't get much new out of this one unless, I suppose, these new clothes take a front seat in the next arc?

Cable and X-Force 17
Hopeless (w) and Sandoval (a) and Rosenberg (c)

The Adversary is on the loose in the X-Force bunker and Forge and Doctor Nemesis are trapped in Forge's mind while he uses Forge's body. Forge realizes that he hasn't left the bunker yet because he can't; the Adversary's incredible magic powers don't work on cold metal, such as the steel the bunker is entirely made out of (seems arbitrary). The key, then, is to keep him in there and to get Doc's consciousness out of Forge's body and have Doc kill Forge to stop the Adversary getting loose in the world. Doc refuses but Forge insists and both try to contact Boom Boom to stop her blowing holes in the bunker and to get her to get Doc out with the mind sync in the lab. Meanwhile, Domino and Colossus stop the avalanche hitting the small town below with a bit of luck and some ingenuity while Cable and Hope have worse luck against the Reavers and their Reavertron 9, made up of the lower level Reavers in the area. After a bit of fighting and some impressive fortitude on both their parts, Hope destroys the Reavertron and takes down the higher ranking Reavers and Cable carries her exhausted body out. Back at the bunker, Boom Boom manages to reach the switch, sending Doc's and Forge's consciousnesses into Doc's mind but, with the mind sync grabbing all nearby consciousnesses, it also sends the Adversary to Doc. Forge is annoyed that it seems impossible to save any of them but Doc points out that not all minds are created equal and he uses the tools in his own mindscape to indefinitely trap the Adversary, eager to hold his victory over Forge for long to come.

Nice little issue as everything here wraps up pretty cleanly and rather abruptly. Domino and Colossus get their moment together as they get to go on their date night after successfully working together to save the town and detonate the Sentinel. Cable and Hope get a bit of bonding time and Hope gets to prove herself to her father. Doc and Forge share a nice moment when Doc reveals that his plan of entering Forge's mind was a little short-sighted and he didn't have time to plan an exit strategy, too concerned was he in saving his reluctant friend's life. I'm also in favor of this issue because we get a lot of Doc Nemesis and we get to see him pretty much win outright in his constant battle of wits with Forge. Nice issue and a nice conclusion, in a way, to the series. There are still a few more issues before this book and UNCANNY X-FORCE disappear and get replaced by Si Spurrier's X-FORCE early in 2014 but the next few issues will be the crossover series VENDETTA between the two X-Force books and will therefore not exactly be based around the mission statement of this team (or of the other team but that one has less of a mission statement and more of a "we banded together because we had to in order to stop this crazy threat") so it's like the series is ending here, in a way. Bit sad. It does make me wonder how long in advance Hopeless knew about the replacement of this book, especially considering how abrupt the finale of this little arc was, wrapping things up in a hastily tied bow. Oh well, it all works out well and Sandoval's art really fits the sort of chaotic action we see throughout the issue. Nicely done all the same.

Uncanny X-Men 14, X-Men 7

Uncanny X-Men 14

Bendis (w) and Bachalo, Townsend, Mendoza, Vey, Irwin, and Olazaba (a) and Bachalo (c)

The new X-Men team Cyclops has assembled isn't exactly up to spec yet and Cyclops wants to make sure they're ready when the true tests come. That means extra training for everyone, both using and not using powers. Perhaps the most disillusioned is Benjamin Deeds, the new X-Man who can change his appearance (or at least people's perceptions of him) to match what others want to see. He believes he is not of much use to the X-Men and Cyclops doesn't really help that feeling. Emma Frost, though, sees his power as perhaps the most impressive of the bunch and takes it upon herself to train him a little more, bringing him to Atlantic City and running him through a couple of tests to get him used to using his powers. After he's worked a bit with it, she sends him on a mission, delivering a letter to one Timothy Dugan (who readers will recognize as Dum Dum Dugan) in a disguised SHIELD facility. Deeds manages to make his way through successfully, deliver the message, and leave. The message, unfortunately for Deeds, informs Dugan that SHIELD is using Sentinels and that they need to discontinue or it will spark a war and is signed by Cyclops. Men surround Deeds as he's trying to leave, though Illyana and Emma break him out in time. They return to base and find an impressed but not surprised Cyclops waiting.

I think this would be the right move for this book for the next set of issues, a series of what basically amount to one-shots focused on each new character individually. I think the team moments of this book have been bogged down by Bendis' need to back-and-forth every bit of dialogue and to make everyone quip in the background of tense moments and what have you. Changing the focus from team to individuals to help establish who these characters are would go a long way to legitimizing the X-Men team as a whole. We've had this team for 14 issues now and I feel like I have very little sense of who these guys are as individuals and even by their powers. The best way to right that ship would be to allow each of them some one-on-one time with a professor or something, giving them their own story to establish them, as this issue did. As a result, I liked this issue more than I've liked a lot of the others. I think giving us a sense of character would help a lot in terms of making the book feel more like an X-Men book and would, perhaps, make some of the back-and-forth banter parts more tolerable (less optimistic on that front).

X-Men 7

Wood (w) and T. Dodson and R. Dodson (a) and Keith (c)

Lady Deathstrike is returning to the Marvel Universe in the form of a shared body after dying some time ago. The body she's sharing is that of 18-year-old Ana Cortes, billionaire heiress to her recently deceased father's Colombian empire. Cortes wanted to team with Lady Deathstrike and upgraded herself to accept her consciousness and powers (kind of ill-defined on the how she did that, as yet, or REALLY the why). Her target now is Karima Shapandar, newly out of her coma, hoping that she can get her hands on the Omega Level Sentinel tech inside of her. Armed with a set of henchmen and dossiers on the everyone at the school, Cortes arrives at Westchester, hoping to access Karima. It's easier than she thought to reach Karima as Karima and new school resident Monet, formerly of X-Factor and currently taking some time and laying low, are out for a run. Cortes' men manage to get a shot on Karima, hitting her in the arm, before Monet, not documented on Cortes' intel, absolutely destroys the henchmen and their weapons. Cortes leaves but not before Monet identifies her as Lady Deathstrike. As both teams regroup, the X-Men realize what they're up against and Deathstrike finds a new target and a new assistant; her new target, based on recent gathered information, is the immensely powerful Arkea, and her new assistant is Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary.

A lot of cool stuff here as our cast of characters grows a little bit with the addition of Karima, Monet, and (kind of) Bling. Bling has a moment in here where we find out she's been talking to Jubilee about her love-life and things aren't going particularly well, as her unrequited feelings for Mercury led to Mercury punching her, apparently. She tells Jubilee that it's okay though, as she has her eyes set on someone else now (HINT: smart money's on Jubilee), meaning we're not likely to see the last of her just yet. ANYWAY, the story I spent the whole paragraph above describing. The re-emergence of Lady Deathstrike is an interesting choice and one that I think I'll be a little more interested by when we get a little more information. I had to re-read most of the comic before reviewing it and still ended up deleting a lot of my first attempts at sentences, as they mostly kept saying things like "Cortes wanted to team with Lady Deathstrike because...oh, we don't really know that. Cortes upgraded herself by...I don't know. I mean, the slot in her neck, right? And like, a USB drive? Um. Okay." Still, the characterization is solid with a nice amount of time spent on new resident Monet and on Karima, as well as brief flashes of Storm and Rachel's continued power struggle and Jubilee's situation. There's a story forming here and it seems like it could be a good one, but I'd like to get a little more information out of it first.

Hunger 4, A+X13, Wolverine MAX 12

Hunger 4
Fialkov (w) and Kirk (a) and Aburtov (c)

Rick Jones has taken the helmet (and therefore the powers and the bomb) used by Captain Marvel, enhancing his own already impressive powers and giving him access to the device Mahr Vel had designed to defeat the Gah Lak Tus Swarm. The helmet predicts, if he uses the bomb near Hala, that the death count would be in the millions, an outcome Rick is unwilling to accept. At great personal risk, he manages to use his Nova powers to teleport Galactus and the swarm to an emptier location where he detonates the bomb more safely. It (at least temporarily) disables the swarm and deals a massive blow to Galactus, who escapes to gain more energy. The Watcher predicts he'll move towards the highest energy planet in the area (Earth, of course, in Ultimate: Cataclysm) but that Rick Jones, who managed to survive the attack, has other things to worry about, things that will present themselves in time.

Not a bad ending to what has been a pretty reliable series. Last issue showed Rick abandon his responsibility, unwilling to continue his involvement in fighting the massive force, but he's inspired to go back and, if need be, sacrifice himself to save the universe. He throws himself into that role now without reservation and only hesitates when he realizes the death toll if he tries to take out Galactus over Hala. Even then he doesn't hesitate to use his powers to teleport Galactus and the swarm away, an action that, by itself, could kill him. It's a nice progression from first issue Rick, who didn't understand his role in the universe and who was completely unprepared to get into such a big fight. He had done good things but he was ready for a break and ready to hang up the helmet for a bit, it seemed, before being frustratingly called back by the Watcher. After the stumble in issue three, his resolve is far stronger and seeing the actions of so many heroes around him (Spider-Man and Mahr Vel, particularly) strengthens him more. It's pretty classic hero's journey stuff but it's presented in an interesting and, above all else, succinct way, from which the book benefits. I've said before that the pacing is excellent and the choice to make this a four issue series instead of anything bigger (as Marvel has preferred to do of late) was a smart call, not allowing time for the series to wallow in any one thought. As a result, this is a bang-bang little series with a good core, some solid characterization, and a good story that will, it seems, pretty perfectly lead in to Cataclysm. Great work all around, Fialkov and crew did their jobs here.

A+X 13
Captain America and Cyclops: Duggan (w) and Yardin (a) and Mossa (c)
Black Widow and Emma Frost: Chaykin (w and a) and Delgado (c)

Story one, Captain America and Cyclops, is an interesting new attempt by the apparently ongoing A+X series (seriously, I was sure this was only going to last like, ten issues max, what is happening?) to tell an ongoing story with continuity and everything. This is part one of six of a story where a rebel Skrull band, helped in their training by none other than Charles Xavier, is preparing to attack Earth in the wake of Xavier's death and in retribution for the long-past Secret Invasion. A Skrull unassociated to that band has called together Captain America and Cyclops, failing to reach Xavier, to tell them so they won't seek retribution from the Skrulls if it comes to that. Of course, Cap and Cyclops aren't on great terms right now, to say the least, and immediately jeopardize the mission by fighting on the Skrull's ship and, conveniently, damaging all of the equipment the Skrull might use to pick different heroes or to scan people to see if they're really Skrulls or any other thing they might do. The two will have to grudgingly put their differences aside to protect the planet, made harder by the fact that Cap managed to lock Cyclops in nearly unbreakable handcuffs. Should be an interesting attempt as A+X delves into continuity for the first time here and puts the two people who are perhaps most furious with one another together for six ten-page issues. I'm not totally onboard with the premise but, again, it's just A+X, I'll let abrupt storytelling slide here.

Comic pro Howard Chaykin takes story two, a tale of espionage and intrigue and, well, mostly sex as Emma Frost enlists Black Widow's reluctant help to track down a sex tape Frost made in her Hellfire Club days so the person who has the tape will stop blackmailing her. The pair eventually manage to track down the scumbag who has it and Emma Frost, concentrating to her utmost, uses her weakened powers to punish the man; whenever he sees bare breasts in the future, he will helplessly projectile vomit. I have my problems with Howard Chaykin's art and writing style though I recognize that he's from sort of a different wing of comics and a different age than I'm really in favor of so I understand there is an appeal there that's unique to his work. I quite like his work in Matt Fraction's independent comic Satellite Sam but I have my problems with it here. I also tend to have problems when female superheroes are put into this kind of sexually motivated hole because don't we have enough of that everywhere else in our world? Still, the characterizations aren't awful and there are some nice pieces of dialogue here. It's not enough for me to really climb onboard this story but, again, I'm sure there are big Chaykin fans out there (and this art is distinctly Chaykin) who will love seeing these characters rendered in such a way. I'm not one. Worth a miss.

Wolverine MAX 12
Starr (w) and Ruiz (a) and D. Brown (c)

Wolverine has been hypnotized by Mother Night, who has found out about his fighting prowess, his healing factor, and, now, his deadly claws. Thrilled by the discoveries, Mother Night has decided to keep Wolverine pretty firmly in her grasp as her own personal assassin, among other things. His first target is Vegas gambler Max Fisher (no relation to Rushmore). She gives Wolverine a photo of him and makes him forget their conversation, coming back to his senses with the picture and an unexplainable hatred for Fisher. He's suspicious when he awakens, not knowing how he got the photo and not sure why he hates the stranger, but he can't come up with any reasons why. His fighting prowess, though, seems totally gone as he can no longer fully control himself; he manages to win another cage fight only after getting pounded on for a while and after Mother Night intercedes to get him to fight better before going to kill Fisher. Of course, after the fight he tracks and slays Fisher. He wakes up bloodied and all over the news.

Interesting story in that it will be interesting to see how Wolverine figures out he's being used and exactly what his retribution is when he does figure it out. Mother Night's not a bad villain for him in this series because he's so vulnerable to anything that makes him question his memory more and that he can't really identify as a threat. When he's not directly under her control, he recognizes some sort of attraction to her (mostly implanted by her) but can't quite place the uneasy feeling he has. I think it's a strong villain and it could lead to a strong story but the arc is still rather bogged down by excessive explanation and minor story points, sending the audience through explanation after explanation and reminding us over and over that his memory is bad. Some of that is important; Mother Night explaining away his uneasiness by blaming his damaged memory is an important moment because it shows the audience that there's a reason Wolverine could allow for these weird directions. Still, we get kind of hit over the head with it, which both slows the issue and over-explains, something you don't really want to do in comics. I think this story has the makings of a good arc but it's not going to quite reach it until Starr can get out of his own way.

Uncanny X-Men 12, X-Men Legacy 17, Ultimate X-Men 31

Uncanny X-Men 12
Bendis (w) and Bachalo, Townsend, Irwin, Mendoza, Olazaba, and Vey (a) and Gracia (c)

Jean and young Scott have come to older Scott's X-Men team for help, hoping that his rogue team might offer them an alternative to being sent back to the past, where they belong. After much discussion and thought, Scott says that he will help to protect them from being sent back (Scott of all people should really be against this) though Emma is against it. Meanwhile, Kitty continues to argue with impassioned and nonsensical speeches about allowing people to do what they want with their lives to her X-Men team and the future X-Men team that they should be allowed to stay. Future Jean and Xavier get a lock on young Jean and Scott and everyone goes to Utopia to retrieve them or fight on their behalf. Future Jean freezes the others and knocks young Jean out. Of course, Emma and the Cuckoos are not frozen and Emma tells future Jean that, though she thinks the original team should be sent back, knocking young Jean out while being future Jean is not okay and gets ready to battle her.

I've been pretty harsh on Uncanny X-Men, All-New X-Men, and, most recently, Battle of the Atom. Sometimes I have to pull back and ask if my dislike is warranted or if I don't like, perhaps, some of the conceits or the writing or whatever factor and am now blowing it out of proportion. Uncanny X-Men 12, to me, feels like the proof I need to say "nope, definitely not." I hate this issue. I hate everything about it and it culminates in what seems to be the biggest, dumbest fan service with even a wink, in case we needed it, to say that it's the biggest fan service. Haven't seen Jean and Emma fight in nearly a decade? Worry not, WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED. Want people who see time travel regularly to still be flummoxed by the rules of time travel? Covered. Want to see normally smart characters suddenly turn absurdly dumb? How about if they have impassioned speeches that come from the heart even if they are unbelievably stupid? Covered and covered. Want more of that back-and-forth dialogue that is meant to be fast but, in fact, slows down the flow of the book to a ridiculous degree? Hey. We've got you covered. So yes, I think this book and this event are both terrible and it's hard to see it as anything other than the weakest form of fan service that I can't, in good faith, believe was actually asked for. And this is coming from someone who read Avengers vs. X-Men. I rather wish I wasn't reviewing this with Legacy and Ultimate X-Men, both of which are really good books and which are weakened by being on the same post as Uncanny X-Men. But I already made a schedule and I'm sticking with it.

X-Men Legacy 17
Spurrier (w) and Pham (a) and Rosenberg (c)

Cyclops and David have begun their "no powers" fight and are right in the middle of it as we begin this issue. We get a fair deal of David's inner monologue (and a little bit of fourth wall breaking as he addresses the audience, the people reading his thoughts) and a whole bunch of recap of things that have come before as the two trade blow for blow. Though Scott is a trained martial artist and is stronger and quicker than David, it's a reasonably even fight because, as David points out, Scott doesn't usually get to brawling with people, instead using his powers vs. their powers, and Scott has a code of honor. David doesn't have that, particularly, and he's really, really angry and, he admits, a bit envious of Scott, as he was viewed by Charles. The fight finally ends with, of course, David finally succumbing. Down and out, he uses his powers just enough to incite Scott, who blasts him into the new mutant Scott and his team had found (she fuses living matter together) and this action, thanks to Scott's attack, creates the world worm we've seen David, in his visions of the future, turn into. David becomes a part of the world worm and begins reaching out for more mutant minds. That means mutantkind is doomed unless Blindfold can kill David before things get too out of control. However, before she can strike, she's stopped by what seems to be a robot containing the mind of Blindfold's brother Luca.

There is an awful lot happening here. There'd be plenty to talk about even if this issue was just Scott and David fighting but then we get the whole last half of the book. The recap is maybe a little heavy at times but it's particularly understandable once we get to the end of the issue, which reveals Luca again, not to mention the world worm. There's also a fair amount of monologue, a lot of text, which slows things down a bit at the beginning (thanks, in no small part, to all the recap). Unlike with most books I say that about, here it still flows pretty well. Spurrier has created such an interesting and complex character with David that his thoughts are more than just the usual superhero book fodder. He's not just narrating what's happening and maybe making a quip or an aside or a reference here and there; he's a fully fledged person with a real personality and a lot to think on. It comes with real questions and doubt and confidence and strength and sadness and anger and happiness and love and many other emotions while also incorporating many human tics and behaviors. All around great writing throughout this series. This issue kind of feels a little like it's leading to a series conclusion but, to my knowledge, the book hasn't been cancelled. I'm hoping that stays true and this just feels big because it is big, not because it doesn't have a chance to get bigger.

Ultimate X-Men 31
Wood (w) and A. Martinez and J. Lucas (a) and Sotomayor (c)

Tian has more or less announced war on Utopia and Kitty has made arrangements by deciding to step down as the head and face of Utopia and put Colossus in charge. She's done this, she explains to her conflicted people, to give the world a different face to look at, one they haven't likely seen and one who is more than a little intimidating without the intent to look intimidating. She can now also be a part of the army that's formed on Utopia. We see a little bit more of what will be defending Utopia before we look in on Tian. Storm has eyes on the nation and is wreaking havoc with the weather there. On the island itself, Jimmy Hudson is having some qualms with the way Jean is running things. He lets slip that he still believes in Utopia and she asks him to choose which side he's on. He's locked up shortly thereafter and Jean formulates a plan, based on the announcement of Kitty's resignation. To attack now would make Tian seem like the aggressors (they rather are, but the world doesn't necessarily see it that way). Jean, then, intends to release Jimmy into Tian to murder civilians, looking like a Utopian terrorist. She plays with Jimmy's mind and releases him, warning Tian of the "breakout." She also authorizes Farbird to find and kill Storm.

It's hard to say tensions are still ramping up when the tensions are already so high. I really like this series and I'm continually impressed by the way tension ratchets up in some new way every issue without ever feeling like it's piled too high, high enough that it's broken past the point of believability, even in this world. The only thing that one could possibly point to as a little weird in these dealings is how far gone Jean Grey seems to be, but even that is a weak point at best. Something is clearly going on with Jean and it's hard to say exactly what but it's certainly impacting this story in pretty extreme ways. Still, everything else seems perfectly reasonable within this world. The actions Kitty and Utopia have taken don't seem out of sync with their possibilities; the logic is always there. The same mostly holds true in Tian, where Jean seems unhinged but is still making kind of logical decisions given how unhinged she may be. Really good stuff which moves the book extremely well and never piles too high to wear the reader down. It's enough to keep a lurking sense of dread, which is perfect for this book.

Astonishing X-Men 64, Uncanny X-Men 8, Wolverine 6

Astonishing X-Men 64
Liu (w) and Walta (a) and Peter (c)

To start, some bad news. Marvel has announced they are canceling Astonishing X-Men in October with issue 68. It's pretty unfortunate as I've found myself liking this series more than any other X-Men team title of late (I have high hopes for Brian Wood's X-Men but we're only on issue two over there, so I don't want to say yet). It's felt a little more toned down in its approach, which I think has a lot to do with the softer art of it, and Marjorie Liu kills it when she has the chance to write character over plot. Definitely sad news as Marvel cancels another fairly strong one. Anyway, on to this issue. Bobby is still covering the world in ice and snow and his teammates are trying to bring him down. They manage to wound him a bit, but nothing long term, as Kitty dives through his giant ice body and touches the purple force within. It stuns her and he flees. Wolverine and company hunt down Dark Beast, last seen in the X-Termination event, and Wolvy accuses him of placing within Bobby a fragment of Apocalypse power when they jumped through a portal back home. Dark Beast agrees to help them find out if the power can be removed but he's never really one to be trusted. Meanwhile, Bobby goes to visit his parents, still hoping to connect with someone. He's shooed away by his father which results in Bobby using the snow and ice to kill him. While Bobby Prime has been doing all of this, little Bobby fragments have tried to salvage the last bits of memory and caring they hold, taking some of the people Bobby had once loved and trying to protect them from him. Mystique is with one of the fragments and asks him about all of it but his memories are fading as Bobby becomes stronger. Bobby finds them and Mystique convinces him to allow her into his plan, wishing to share the power with him. Back home, Wolverine and his team talk about what needs to be done; if they can't save Bobby, they have to be prepared to kill him to stop Apocalypse's influence. Of course, it eventually does come down to a fight, with Thor joining in the battle as well. Mystique and Bobby attack the X-Men and Thor, quickly gaining the advantage, before Opal tries to talk to Bobby. Bobby lashes out at her but, while he's distracted, Thor takes the opportunity to blast the Apocalypse power out of him. Before Thor can advance, Mystique spears him with an ice shard and moves ahead. She picks up the small bit of power and pops it into her mouth.

Certainly a strange ending made all the more tense by contemplating a Mystique with the sort of power Bobby had. Not entirely sure what it could grant her; this power seemed to amplify Bobby's natural abilities and corrupt his soul, but it didn't seem to cause any new powers. We'd seen everything he did here before, just to a far lesser scale. So will Mystique shapeshift even better? I don't know. Will shapeshifting give her the power of whoever she shapeshifts into? Because I'd like to know more about how that works. And her soul's already pretty corrupted, though not to the level that Apocalypse would have it. Anyway, definitely some interesting stuff as Bobby seems to go past a couple of points of no return here. Only Thor, outside of the X-Men, seems aware that this is Bobby's doing as a news report in the issue says witnesses saw a giant ice man but no one can guarantee it was anything more than severe cold hallucinations. On top of that, Dark Beast makes a sinister comment to Gambit, asking whether the second Apocalypse personality ever goes away or not, so even if Bobby was acting completely under the influence of the power (which maybe amplified the way he was feeling already) it's not guaranteed it will all go away as quickly as it came. We're in for an interesting conclusion next issue.

Uncanny X-Men 8
Bendis (w) and Bachalo (a) and Townsend (c)

Scott and Emma drop Fabio (the gold ball new mutant) back off at home on his request, telling him that they'll be around if he wants to reconsider. They return and discuss with the rest of the new mutants and the original team how everyone needs to train more. Magik leads the Cuckoos to the new mutant we glimpsed last issue, who apparently has control over cars, and rescue him from a situation with the police, though not before the police shoot him. When they return home, their healer Christopher manages to fix that up because healers tend to take the tension away from more minor injuries. Meanwhile, Fabio is being grilled for far too long by his parents and his sister about where he's been and about what's happening and so on. None of them listen to him when he tells them that he's a mutant and the X-Men aren't bad people and they saved him and so on and this scene goes on FOREVER. Then Dazzler, agent of SHIELD, shows up at his door asking to talk.

I will say, the plus side of that back-and-forth dialogue I've decried so much on this blog is that it's easier to review an issue chock full of it because there's not much space for things to happen. Plot things. It's still not easy to read because you get halfway through the book and feel like you've read several issues of a very boring and slow moving book. I know I've talked about it plenty already, but I have to again say that the sort of dialogue prevalent here is not a natural dialogue to be reading. I tend not to buy, even in Sorkin's work or in shows like Gilmore Girls that feel like a direct influence on this writing style, that people talk this way but you forgive it in TV because listening to it is somewhat easier than reading it all. It's fast-paced, it's quick, and it conveys an energy. It doesn't do any of those things in comics because regardless of how short the bursts of speech are, you're still taking the time to read it all. It feels forced and unnatural while also feeling unrepentantly smarmy. It's hard to look past all of that to even dive into the issue but, more than that, it feels like less happens in the issue because of it. If you like this style of writing, you'll probably like this book. If you have numerous problems with this style of writing, you will pretty clearly hate this book.

Wolverine 6
Cornell (w) and Pierfederici and Palmer (a) and Mossa (c)

Wolverine is still trying to fight his way through the SHIELD helicarrier to reach the parasite in Nick Fury or to get off or to turn the helicarrier around or something. He's trying to defeat it, anyway. However, the parasite isn't taking too kindly to his attempts and is, as the issue begins, trying to drown him. His team of protected SHIELD agents help him get to safety and he borders on berserker as he leaves the water. Main SHIELD agent McDougall wants that rage to come out, sure that they need an angry Wolverine. Somehow, her hyping him up seems to calm him down and he gets a grip on himself. I don't know, it just happens that way. The parasite sends more foes for them to face, including a specially enhanced SHIELD team called SHIELD team Namor, meant to fight in watery conditions. They tear through the team, killing most and severing the air tank from another, meaning the parasite can take him over. Soon it's just Wolverine and McDougall left. The pair make their way through the helicarrier and attempt to go to the microverse and back but they're blocked by the parasite, sending them to see their real forms, which are hideous. Wolverine allows them to supervillain out their whole plan, which is largely about infesting Earth and taking over people so they can all live together peaceably even if it removes the consciousness of the humans, before attacking. McDougall hijacks one of their ships and manages to navigate it to a point in the microverse where they grow back into normal space, now moved in the real universe to the helicarrier's bridge. It's a bit confusing and pretty poorly defined, but it places Wolverine and McDougall behind a now-somewhat-panicking Fury (still controlled by the parasite) so Wolverine can knock him out (the host body losing consciousness forces the parasite out, apparently). The flood the ship with stun gas and knock everyone out, allowing them to awaken as themselves again, where Wolverine explains to Fury's what's been happening. Before they were all expelled, though, they said something about triggering the process, which seems to come to fruition at the end of the issue as Wolverine feels himself start losing blood and realizes he's not healing.

I don't know what it is about this series but there's something in there that makes it hard to really get behind. I can't see the parasite as a legitimate enemy at this point, not because they've been unthreatening but more because they're so incredibly vague. It's vague in a not-mysterious way, which would create some amount of tension or fear of them. Instead, they seem like another obstacle and one that's somehow lasted this long. It could be the writing between Wolverine and the other characters, which feels almost entirely dry and emotionless. When emotions do break through, their clichéd and expected. It's hard to feel anything about this story, which seems largely due to what I've said about the enemy but also in large part to its hero. I'm not sure how you can make a book about Wolverine, one of Marvel's biggest characters ever, and make the audience feel uncomfortable with him. I'm not saying uncomfortable in the sort of "I don't know if I condone those choices" sort of way, which is rather what Wolverine is all about, but uncomfortable in a sort of squirming, can't sit still kind of way because he's not really doing anything of note, even when he is. Also, a more cynical man than I would point to the similarity of the parasite taking away his healing factor as a similarity with the new Wolverine movie coming out, wherein he seems to lose his healing factor. That's not new, to have a storyline in a book that corresponds to a major motion picture that's coming out, but it always feels a little like a cheap move. I can't say I recommend this book, which is too bad because there has been some interesting stuff in the series overall. It gets far too bogged down by itself, preferring to explain every bit of action in a "you see how smart this series is?" sort of way that really makes the series crawl along.

Uncanny X-Men 3, X-Treme X-Men 12

Uncanny X-Men 3
Bendis (w) and Bachalo, Townsend, Mendoza, Vey and Olazaba (a) and Bachalo (c)

Maybe my problem with Bendis now is that there's just too many words. I've said before that I think he's writing as if comics were a TV show or a movie but the mediums are completely different. Bendis has come out before as a fan of Gilmore Girls, which totally fits with his dialogue. I'm not saying Gilmore Girls is a bad TV show, just that it is a TV show. You can do the snappy dialogue and the fast back-and-forth in TV and in movies but I still maintain that it doesn't fit in comics. In comics, it's just a lot of word bubbles distracting from the point everyone is trying to make. And it appears in ALL of Bendis' comics. Each comic that comes out has someone (or some group of someones) in the background making extra but unnecessary points or quips or "geez, how did I do that...I still don't know how I did that!" kinds of remarks. It doesn't fit because it doesn't flow and because it distracts from whatever seriousness might be going on. All the kids, perfectly ordinary kids before their mutations appeared only days ago, are stunned by the appearance of the Avengers (which they should be) but won't shut up about it. We get it, you've never been in this situation. Frankly, I think most kids would be stunned silent in this instance. Apparently, though, they'd all be telling each other how they don't understand what's going on and making jokes behind everyone. So maybe it's not the right format. Maybe if this was a television show or a movie, this would all make sense and flow beautifully. Or maybe it's too many words for any medium.

Anyway, the Avengers show up to take Scott and Emma into custody and Bendis still writes Captain America as a one-dimensional jerk. No one in this comic seems to listen to anyone else in this comic. Cap doesn't listen to Scott and Emma saying that they weren't the ones who broke apart the Phoenix and forced it into their bodies and Scott and Emma don't listen to Cap saying that, no matter what, Scott still killed Professor Xavier. Cap then throws in the fact that Havok is on the Uncanny Avengers and it FEELS like Cap is admitting to making a PR move with his new Avengers team, which the Cap in Uncanny Avengers would probably also admit to, but not as a weapon. He did it because mutants need the press and the world needs to see mutants as friends, the same way they might see Avengers. Here, he says it as if he's saying "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M BAD AT MUTANTS? I'M GREAT AT MUTANTS! PRAISE ME!" Look. I have some issues with this issue. And with this series. And with this writer. I think I'm going down a pit of disdain for Bendis that no amount of "oh, but remember his run on Daredevil? And Ultimate Spider-Man?" can save. Magneto comes and reveals to Scott and Emma that he betrayed them to gain the Avengers' and SHIELD's trust. He says that now they'll totally trust him and he's done something no one saw coming and everyone hails it as a brilliant move even though it's so common, we have a regularly used name for it: double cross. I don't know. Guys. I'm having trouble being objective about this any more. Maybe I'm not. Maybe this is my objective reasoning. I think I would still feel this way without knowing Bendis wrote it, or without his back catalogue. But I don't know any more. Let's just move on.

X-Treme X-Men 12
Pak (w) and Araujo (a) and Kholinne w/ Caeli (c)

Things are again heating up in the X-Treme X-Men set of universes. The three evil Xaviers who had teamed up last issue opened a portal to the multiverse and offered sacrifices to it in order to take over the world only to find that whatever was inside was far worse. Dazzler and her team rebelled against the Xaviers but too late to stop the portal from opening, killing the Nazi and Witch Xaviers (the head-in-a-jar Xavier claims to have been manipulated by the other Xaviers but says he has done what he could to prevent them from finding Dazzler's team, which kind of fits, so they keep him alive for now). Now they're going through the portal to save the multiverse but quite possible sacrificing the world they left behind to whatever horrors are coming from the portal. Interestingly, this was billed on the "Road to X-Termination" event postcard as a prologue to X-Termination, the event that will center around AoA Nightcrawler trying to return to his dimension from the 616. So this portal seems to be something of a hinge to those events. We'll see.

Anyway, not too much else to talk about here. Basic character stuff, mostly stuff we already knew. Dazzler is taking the kid's gloves off and swears that, if killing needs to be done, she's willing to kill and to die. She makes sure her team is prepared for all of that too. So we'll see if that changes as the book goes on or if she'll have to kill to accomplish her goals. Lot of mini-X-Forcing around the Universe right now. I guess that's what happens when you have a book that's as great as Remender's come through the wires; everyone wants to use something of a similar formula. It seems the original threat of the ten evil Xaviers has subsided but given way to a whole new threat, which is probably Xavier-related anyway but I guess we'll have to find out later. AoA Nightcrawler might make a good fit for this new, suddenly violent team, should he find his way into it. Two Nightcrawlers on one team! Can you imagine? Probably. It's probably happened before. I don't know, comics are weird, you guys.

Astonishing X-Men 59, Uncanny X-Force 2, Uncanny X-Men 2

Astonishing X-Men 59
Liu (w) and Walta (a) and Peter (c)

The X-Termination event that's coming to very specific places of the Marvel Universe kicks off in Astonishing X-Men as Wolverine takes his astonishing team to try to hunt down Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler. It's an interesting idea, particularly as I was always very intrigued by the ideas that Nightcrawler represented, as I talked about early in this blog's history with X-Force. Those ideas are coming at us full force, it would seem, in this little event, if this issue is to be believed. Wolverine has some serious trust issues after allowing himself to see Nightcrawler as his old best friend and now he feels extra betrayed by the way things ended. After Nightcrawler killed AoA Blob (by putting a SHARK inside of him, i.e. best murder EVER), Wolverine sets out to find and exact revenge on him for the betrayal. The only thing I don't really like is, if that is the murder they keep talking about (and I don't remember another murder Nightcrawler committed in X-Force), Nightcrawler told Wolverine all along that his goal was to kill Blob. When he was a part of their covert kill team. And he told Wolverine who, as Bobby points out in this issue, doesn't have the best moral compass himself. If that's the true issue, it seems a little weak.

There are some lines in here that show it's not the full issue; the full issue is that this isn't the 616's Nightcrawler and Wolverine feels betrayed that it's not, but that still isn't on Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler said all along that they weren't friends, that he wasn't their Nightcrawler. I can understand Wolverine being mad that Nightcrawler betrayed the team overall (because he did, but not by killing Blob) but, again, as bad as it was, I didn't see it as a huge crime. Nightcrawler made his intentions very clear from the get-go. I don't think it's on him that Wolverine feels played. Anyway, the rest of this event should be good; I still really like the idea behind this Nightcrawler and I'm interested to see where he ends up.

Uncanny X-Force 2
Humphries (w) and Garney and Miki w/ Hanna (a) and Gracia w/ Gonzalez and Quintana (c)

Things are heating up in the new Uncanny X-Force. As Psylocke fights her way through a drugged up crowd intent on destroying her thanks to some new psychic imagery, Storm and Puck chase down Spiral, who has left with the new mutant girl casting the psychic imagery on the crowd at the club. MEANWHILE, Bishop is back in the present and crazier than ever. His mind is clearly warped and he growls and roars a whole lot. He also seems more powerful than before, or at least more violently powerful. MEANWHILE AGAIN, Fantomex is out on a date with Cluster (which is still creepy but losing some of that, SOMEHOW) and they discuss missing Betsy. If they miss Betsy, Cluster explains, then so must the dark, mutant-hating Fantomex. Now they feel obligated to track down and protect Betsy, which will likely be a super happy and not at all uncomfortable or rage-inspiring reunion. Almost definitely.

I do like what we've seen so far of character building. I like that Fantomex gets Cluster stolen presents and that we quickly find out that he also used to steal presents for Betsy. I think that's a pretty great touch for his character. I also appreciate that Betsy isn't meant to play by the rules. She's "given up" on killing but she will still psychically control people to fight on her behalf, even warping their mind into thinking that they're playing a video game when they fight on her behalf. That's another nice touch; Betsy doesn't play by rules, she's a ninja. She plays to win.

I will say, I don't love the way that swearing is dealt with in this book. I guess I'm not opposed to the fact they swear; it's a rougher book than most, the characters likely would swear more. However, when someone swears, instead of the generic "%#$!" thing comics will do, they black out the whole word in a black box. I don't know if it's just because it's new and different or because I don't like it, but it's a bit distracting. If that's my biggest issue, sure, I shouldn't be upset. On the other hand, they swear enough that I have to keep being reminded of it. It kind of makes it a little hard to really pull me into that world. Oh well, it is what it is and what it is is probably very minor.

Uncanny X-Men 2
Bendis (w) and Bachalo with Townsend, Mendoza, Vey, and Olazara (a) and Bachalo (c)

Magneto is still betraying these X-Men for reasons I'm still not entirely clear about. I get that he's mad that his powers aren't working and maybe even that he blames Scott for the loss of his powers (though I think Magneto is smarter than that). I still don't really accept it. I also don't really accept that he'd go against finding and training mutants, as that's what he's done all his adult life. Yes he went against Professor X's dream, but this isn't totally following in that dream. Maybe he's mad at Scott for killing Xavier. Again though, I've never seen Magneto as that small-minded. Not that losing your oldest friend wouldn't be unbelievably hard, but Magneto's always been bigger than that. I don't know. I just don't buy it.

Maybe that seems like a small complaint, but it's half of what's driving this book right now. There are other things to talk about, like Scott and Emma's relationship, the discovery of these new mutants and their training, the loss (or gain, in Ilyana's case) of powers and more, but Magneto's betrayal of this X-Men team is what's driving a lot of the plot right now. That makes it a pretty big deal in terms of how this book progresses. Who knows, maybe it's a double cross; maybe he's sending the Avengers there thinking the mutants will damage them. I don't think so, though. The Avengers and X-Men were pretty evenly matched before Emma and Scott lost their powers. I don't know. Maybe it'll clear up a bit. How that shapes up is going to define the start of this series.

Otherwise, things are progressing okay, if a little slowly. I'm a little more skeptical than normal because, as I've said before, Bendis tends to worry me in these kinds of things. He wants people to converse. A lot. Conversation is great in comics because they drive characterization and plot and what not. It's important, okay? But Bendis' books kind of all sound the same, and this is already moving a little in that direction for my liking. I don't know. Maybe I'm calling it too early because I've been disappointed in the past. It did get to a point though where I was predicting upcoming lines accurately. Lines, not plot. Lines and who would say them, even though we have very little time with these new mutants. We'll see where this goes.