New Avengers 16, Uncanny Avengers 18

New Avengers 16
Hickman (w) and R. Morales (a) and F. Martin (c)

Namor has returned to the Illuminati to see how the research is faring. He's not particularly into the research aspect, not being one of the many geniuses on the team, and believes that preparing to destroy worlds rather than studying ones that have been destroyed is the way to go in this situation. He enters one of the observation rooms where Black Panther is recording data and the two trade barbs very briefly before getting into business. In this case, the business is T'Challa showing Namor that, in the forty worlds they've observed, one has survived incursions twice in different manners than the Illuminati have used. The world in question, Earth-4,290,001, has seen its share of invasions and super-powered coups, the most recent of which has left a team of six in charge of protecting the world. Those six, Boundless, Doctor Spectrum, the Rider, the Jovian, the Norn, and Sun God, have banded together to save the people of Earth multiple times and have been called to do so twice more during incursions. As individuals, they are powerful enough to withstands many attacks, including those of the Mapmakers (who they seem familiar with) but as a team they're able to even stop the incurring worlds. The Norn, though it does him great personal harm, is able to use his magics to destroy the incurring world on his own.

For a while now, the book has been more about gathering research and strategies and seeing worlds fall as if to drive the point home to the Illuminati that their attempts are futile and that, as has been the mantra of the entire series, everything dies. Panther's latest discovery, though, seems to point in another direction. Not only does this team withstand two incursions, shattering planets that would destroy their own, Sun God himself even makes a speech á la Reed Richards wherein he says "Everything lives. It lives before it dies, and we are judged by what we do during that time." It's a pretty powerful speech and it's one that shifts, ever so slightly, the running speech and tone of this book. It's very clear that these heroes have seen tremendous hardship - Hickman makes that clear in a little scene between Sun God and the Rider - but their outlook is the glass-half-full side of Reed's continual glass-half-empty approach of "Everything dies. I accept that." It'll be interesting to see where this new data leads. On top of that, as an issue in and of itself, I think Hickman does a pretty fantastic job once again writing the Namor-Black Panther dynamic. It's very clear that these two do not like each other but they are acting very professionally as they discuss matters bigger than either of them. It's one of the things I like about the kings of the Marvel Universe (Namor, Black Panther, and Black Bolt chief among them): each and every one of them cares more for the protection of their people and act accordingly. Here they put aside their feud because, although their people are at war with one another, the destruction of Earth is the bigger threat to their kingdoms. Solid stuff. Rags Morales does a solid job bringing it to the page as well.

Uncanny Avengers 18
Remender (w) and Acuña (a and c)

Smash cut to Planet X, the new mutant planet, several years down the line. Among all the mutants who have created their new planet, full of beautiful and impressive architecture and seemingly a more functional government, are two enemies of the state. Havok still feels responsible for the death of the Earth and refuses to allow Eimin's propaganda, which explains to the populace that Thor and the Avengers were responsible for the death of their world and for holding back mutants, to color his view of the Earth that was. He knows how the final battle happened, as does his wife, the human stowaway Wasp. It's been several years since the loss of Earth and the two have a child now, though parenthood has not stopped them from working to restore their home planet. With the help of Hank McCoy, fellow human supporter, they've realized that their only hope is to bring down the tachyon dam still around the planet. They have no idea if their plan will work as all experiments rely on the wall being down before they can be tested but Alex and Janet set off anyway, pursued by Blob (whose X-gene was reignited), Toad, and Magneto. They manage, after a long and exciting chase scene, to bring down the dam but Janet is captured in the process. Alex returns to his home to find that Kang has finally been able to bring his reinforcements.

After months of teasing, Planet X is here and it's everything you might have imagined. Remender, who is so fond of abruptly jumping forward in time as evidenced by CAPTAIN AMERICA, here jumps maybe five years forward or so onto this planet, where the guilt that drives Alex is palpable and we can really see what a planet full of mutants would look like. It's not that much of a stretch to believe that, upon waking from their pods, the mutants were easily convinced that their life now and here was better. Eimin probably didn't have to do too much propaganda spreading, which is kind of the beauty of this whole conceit. Things probably are better for mutants here. They have a whole planet which, sure, at first was probably jarring but now that it's been several years, they're starting to come into their own. Remender's done a solid job here and the decision to send us into the future as well as off-planet really pays off. The first instinct is to think that the followers of Xavier would want to save Earth and even the humans on it. However, it makes a whole lot of sense that once they settled in, it's everything even the staunchest human supporter could want. The only reason Havok and Wasp haven't decided to just hedge their bets and settle down (other than the reason that Wasp is a human and probably not well liked for it) is that they know the truth of what's happened and the truth about Eimin, not to mention the guilt each of them feels for the loss of the Earth and their teammates. Hank, of course, is just a pretty swell guy so he wants his planet back too. Really interesting stuff here and a great call to skip ahead of the kind of shock and awe phase of the new planet. Daniel Acuña continues to do phenomenal work on the title and really drives home the tone and look of the new world. Very good book all around.

X-Force 2, X-Men Legacy 300

X-Force 2
Spurrier (w) and R. Kim (a and c)

Cable is adamant about uniting mutants in terms of seeing everyone as one people as opposed to their separate factions. In that hope, he contacts every individual faction he can (including Wolverine and Storm at the Jean Grey School, Mystique wherever Mystique's at leading her villains, Magneto wherever Magneto's at, Cyclops at the Xavier School, Polaris at X-Factor, and Havok with the Avengers) to tell them about the recent attacks to mutants and about the new mutant they've found, who he and his team have dubbed Meme. Everyone he talks to is very reluctant to actually care about his information about the war they're fighting and the idea that the mutant race needs to really take care of its own, even after he reveals that Meme is just one in a line of people who seemingly have been experimented on and whose powers have been tested and synthesized. Of course, it seems like both Hope and Marrow are members of that group with Marrow being particularly a strange case as she was depowered on M-Day. The key for Cable and his X-Force now is to track down the person responsible for the events at Alexandria. Cable goes to Fiqh, a higher-up in Saudi intelligence and strikes a deal; Cable and his team will kill someone in his way and he'll give them information. The team succeeds, giving Fiqh a direct line to the head of his agency. He happily gives up the information he promised, leaving Cable and his team with a look at Yevgeny-Malevitch Volga, a billionaire with the means to destroy Alexandria.

Another really compelling issue. I think this one is a little heavier than the last, covering multiple locations and giving a harder-to-follow running narration from Cable instead of Marrow this time. Still, it's a more worthwhile read for how deep it gets. Like in issue one, there are mysteries peeking in from the corners here and ones that you already know will be driving points later down the road but are secondary to the missions now. It's a lot of very cool stuff and Spurrier has very clearly defined the sort of story this one is going to be and the sort of parameters driving the team. I think that Cable being so determined to make the mutants see themselves as one race is really interesting and a really smart move that hasn't really been done before. It's been touched on in the past, particularly after M-Day and with the X-Men's move to Utopia but it's never been on this sort of scale, where Cable so desperately wants everyone involved. The characters are showing a lot of personality and the story certainly has legs. I think this one is going to be another one that builds its world first and then really takes off, like Spurrier did in X-MEN LEGACY, though I'd be surprised if it took quite as long here. Great stuff.

X-Men Legacy 300
Spurrier, M. Carey, and Gage (w) and Huat, Kurth, Sandoval, Yeung, A. Martinez, and Tarragona (a) and Villarrubia, Rosenberg, and Arreola (c)

A young woman with serious injuries to her face has appeared at the Jean Grey School and subsequently been trapped by one of the defense measures surrounding the school: a fence that sucks you in and keeps you trapped more and more the more you want to get into the school. She's trapped pretty badly and none of the X-Men appear to be on hand to help her except one, a mutant man named ForgetMeNot. ForgetMeNot explains that he is an X-Man but is one who is almost entirely unknown because his power is one that makes anyone not focused on him forget about him entirely (not unlike the Silence from Doctor Who but, you know, he's a good guy). The girl explains that she came to the school in the hopes that the X-Men, who she always loved, would accept her although she's not a mutant because, after a sexual attack from a man in her town, her entire home life has pushed her away. However, there's apparently no way to get out of this gate. ForgetMeNot decides to tell her a story to take her mind off how much she wants to get in, something that will hopefully release her. So he tells her a couple of stories, including one about his efforts saving enemy soldiers, or at least giving dying ones some brief moments of peace, when the X-Men were at Fortress X, one about Professor X being the kind of guy who set his watch to remind him about ForgetMeNot every hour so someone knew he was always there, and one about trying to get Weapon Omega and Mimic to take his powers after Professor X died so that he could be noticed at last. The lesson of the stories end up being, essentially, that you are what you are and you are what the past has made you but the key is to do something with it that matters, to live the life you have and make the best of it. Eventually the wall traps ForgetMeNot, who Beast apparently forgot when he programmed the defenses, and frees the girl, allowing her to escape with the lesson learned but forgetting about ForgetMeNot.

It's a solid frame story and the sort of story that makes you go "ahhh, clever" as you start to get the gist of the idea. ForgetMeNot is the sort of perfect character for a retrospective and sweet tale like this one, one that requires an observer from X-Men history but one who is decidedly separate from it. It's like dropping the Watcher in something like this, but a Watcher who is human and therefore more complex. The character and the issue are also impressively tailored to fit the themes of this long and storied series. While ForgetMeNot only interacts briefly with Professor X and never with, say, Rogue or Legion, he spends a long time dealing with Weapon Omega and Mimic, who have powers rather similar to Rogue's and who had spent a lot of time with Rogue in their most recent appearance, and the entire key to the issue is about being forgotten as a character who had never before existed, like a sort of opposite Legion. There's a lot to like about the oversized issue and it's certainly worth a read as long as you're not looking for something that will contribute to a larger story or a larger world and rather looking for a standalone and very introspective issue like so many of these style books tend to be.

Moon Knight 1, Magneto 1

Moon Knight 1
W. Ellis (w) and Shalvey (a) and Bellaire (c)

Moon Knight, Marc Spector (or whatever name he may go by at any given time), is back in New York after a recent spell in LA that saw his personality, long thought to be Dissociative Identity Disorder, fractured into three separate entities on top of the Moon Knight one. These identities were, unlike the identities he'd taken on in the past, in the form of Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. He's started fresh in New York with a new style and new methods; he dresses in an all white suit and goes out at night helping the police solve crimes and going after the perpetrators himself. One such perpetrator is a murderer who has killed strong people all over the city and taken parts of them. Spector tracks him to the tunnels below Manhattan and quickly finds him. He hears him out, hears his story about being an old SHIELD agent wrecked by an IED and trying to put himself back together after being booted from SHIELD. The people he killed didn't matter to him because, in his opinion, they were wasting their strength. Before the killer can attack, Moon Knight reveals that he'd thrown one of his crescent knives into one of the machines keeping the man alive, avenging the travelers he'd killed. Smash cut to just before returning to New York, Spector learning from a doctor that he doesn't have DID, he has "brain damage." His brain was "colonized" by Khonshu, the Egyptian god that brought him back from the dead, and Khonshu has applied his own four aspects, Pathfinder, Embracer, Defender, and Watcher of overnight travelers (and, occasionally, Khonshu's violent aspect of "The One Who Lives On Hearts"), to Spector's brain. Spector's brain then tries to assign personalities to each aspect to make sense of the split. The issue ends as Spector, fresh off taking down the rogue SHIELD agent, returns home to his giant, empty house to see his other two personalities, Steven Grant and Jake Lockley, and Khonshu himself welcoming him home as his son.

Very interesting first issue. This is a tough character to really get into as a comic book writer, one who
differs from so many of the other Marvel heroes. Obviously you can break him down just like any other Marvel character and put him in a camp like "anti-hero" or "vigilante" or "violent mercenary" or "crazy" but that doesn't really get to the root of it. We don't read DAREDEVIL because we like "vigilante" books, we read DAREDEVIL because we like Daredevil and who he is and what he stands for. To that end, Moon Knight is one of those characters that's harder to ascribe a history to. He has a very clearly stated origin but even that is one that gets muddied up by everything that's come after it. Warren Ellis' first take on Moon Knight, then, is to fix that origin in place. He died. Khonshu brought him back. Khonshu's four aspects (five if we include the violent one that kind of pervades the rest when it comes out) have taken up space in Marc's mind. Moon Knight is born as a protector of travelers because that's what Khonshu's about. Period. I don't think it's the flashiest first issue or the most profound first issue I've ever read but I DO think it's possible that this is exactly what this series needs to start with. The last MOON KNIGHT series was Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev and had some really good bits to it but they definitely went for the flashier start, revealing that Moon Knight was talking to Cap, Wolverine, and Spidey but actually just talking to himself because he's CRAZY. Flashy but not too too far removed from who Moon Knight is. Now Ellis is here to say "this book is different than that one but HERE'S WHY that one fits in with this new definition." Very cool start. Good Shalvey art and great Bellaire colors. Should be a lot of fun going forward and now that our ground rules are kind of set, we should have a lot with which to press forward. Only sad I couldn't track down a Skottie Young variant cover (at right) today at my LCS.

Magneto 1
Bunn (w) and Walta (a) and Bellaire (c)

Magneto's left the X-Men and he's on a vengeance tour, tracking down and killing those who have hurt mutants. His first victim, as far as this book goes, is a Doctor Hatcher in Missouri, a man who donates regularly to groups like the Purifiers. He hunts down people like that or ones who kill mutants and he kills them to keep them from doing more harm and to make them answer for their crimes. So far he's kept quiet enough that SHIELD and any other faction that might be after him hasn't pinned him down yet but he knows they're on the lookout. He travels to a town in California that has seen three mutants killed in recent weeks and he manages to find the man responsible, though he's surprised to find that he's handed himself in prior to Magneto's arrival. Magneto isn't satisfied with this, though, sure that the man will slip through the cracks of the legal system and be back on the street in no time. He barges into the police station (where the man is being held) and attacks the police officers before coming upon the man himself. The man warns him to stay back but Magneto advances on him, causing the man to reveal that he's a somewhat crudely put-together Omega Sentinel, a Sentinel in the body of a person, and he attacks Magneto involuntarily. Magneto is able to rip the machinery from the man, though it deals fatal damage to the victim, who reveals that these things were put in him somewhere near Down Acres.

Neat little entrance to the world of Magneto here. As I mentioned in my pre-game this week, Magneto solo books tend not to last very long if they're launched at all. I think part of the problem with a villain-led book is that the villain has to be big enough to care about (which usually means they're pretty evil like Red Skull or Ultron), complex enough that we care about what happens to them (good luck finding too many of those beyond individual arcs), and they have to be trying to do something that isn't taking over the world (no one wants to read a full series where Ultron tries repeatedly to eliminate all human life, especially if the book's conceit is forcing us to route for Ultron in that situation). Magneto's tricky because he certainly fulfills the first two qualifications but he's rarely not trying to exterminate humans or take over the world so it's hard to be on his side. This issue is setting up a book where he's on a one-man war against other people, not mutants vs. humans on the large scale but mutants vs. humans on the small scale. More than that, even, it's mutants vs. genocidal and bigoted humans, humans who would kill or support killing mutants. Although it's an anti-hero book at its core, it makes Magneto pretty unequivocally understandable and it means that, even if you're not so into killing, you can see where he's coming from enough to care what happens to him. Pretty neat stuff. We'll have to see how this one goes in the long-term.

Uncanny Avengers 15, Young Avengers 14

Uncanny Avengers 15
Remender (w) and McNiven and Dell w/ Vines and Leisten (a) and L. Martin (c)

Steve and Alex are rushing forth to stop the Apocalypse twins when Alex is suddenly magicked away. Wolverine duels with Grim Reaper and Daken before also being magicked away while we get a glimpse of all the major mutant establishments and see all of the mutants magicked away together. Unfortunately for the Uncanny Avengers, Uriel and Eimin have seen through Wanda's attempt at treachery and have directed all of the mutants into their transport sarcophagi (not creepy at all) straight out of the teleportation spell, rendering all of them inert and allowing the ark to take off without incident. It does just that as Wasp rounds the corner, hoping to call forth Immortus and his band of powered-up people but failing to do so in time. She battles Sentry who reveals himself to be just absolutely horrifying. Thor shows up in time to provide support but they're not able to bring down Sentry until Jan communicates with some local bugs who tell her of another giant worm deep under the surface. She call it out and gets it to eat Sentry while she and Thor prepare to go to the Apocalypse twins. Cap, meanwhile, overhears the fate of Scarlet Witch, Simon, and Rogue as he prepares to attack the twins and it both causes him to doubt himself as a leader and to attack even more fiercely. Still, he's pretty easily beaten and forced to watch as Exitar the Executioner turns up on Earth to, as the Watcher explains to Thor and Jan, sentence the Earth to death for the killing of a Celestial.

Whoa. So there's a lot going on here and none of it is good for the Unity Squad or, in the least, for mankind. It's probably not great for mutants either but mankind is in a real pickle. One of the treats of this book has been the way that it continually ramps up the stakes without ever making it feel like it's going crazy. This plot, in its entirety, probably should feel like it's gotten absolutely absurd with so many moving parts and such high stakes but it never really gets to the point where you check out. By the same token, with the number of events that the Marvel Universe seems to constantly have, it's almost a little strange to see something this massive and this interesting come as anything less than an event. Such is the problem of events (or one of the problems, anyway): saving your biggest stories for events means that big stories in standalone comics feel somewhat out of place. Still, the story here is great and a lot of the character developments have worked really well for the series, despite being chock-full of characters and plot. Who would have thought that the death of three giant characters in the last issue wouldn't have even been the climax of the story? AS AN ASIDE, I've seen a lot of people accusing Remender of "fridging" Scarlet Witch and Rogue last issue, that their deaths were only there to make Wolverine or the rest of the team feel the stakes by sacrificing a female character. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, just as the accusations that Remender was fridging Sharon in CAPTAIN AMERICA. In both cases, these were long established characters with huge histories whose deaths, yes, did motivate the males (and females, particularly in UNCANNY AVENGERS) in their lives but also who sacrificed themselves exactly the way that any male could have died. This isn't a new female character killed solely for a reaction. ANYWAY, this is already too long, just let it be on record that I do not agree with these claims whatsoever. Good issue.

Young Avengers 14
Gillen (w) and McKelvie, Vieceli, Ward, and Wu (a) and Wilson, Loughridge, Ward, and Bellaire (c)

The foes have been vanquished and now all that's left for the year is the after-party. In an issue littered with excellent artists doing vignettes for our characters, we get to see some resolution (the two-issue arc that will finish out this incredible series, in fact, is called "Resolution") at long last. America and Kate prepare for the party and travel there together, having something of a nice moment together for the first time in the series in pages drawn by Jamie McKelvie and colored by Matthew Wilson. Emma Vieceli and Lee Loughridge provide the art for a nice story that shows Billy and Teddy working their way through their doubts and their worries as Billy gets a nice confidence boost from both David (who admits he would be with Teddy in a heartbeat if Billy were out of the picture) and, somehow even more unexpected, from America. The story transitions nicely into the Christian Ward illustrated story for America, which gives a fair amount of backstory and explains America's childhood to a point, which involves her mothers seemingly giving their lives to close portals into the common multiverse from their home, the Utopian Parallel. The Utopian Parallel is, as it sounds, a utopian parallel to the regular multiverse that was created by, get this, the purest incarnation of the Demiurge's magic. When America learned of her moms' sacrifice, she too leapt into the closing holes to find herself in the multiverse, where she could be the sort of hero her moms were and the Demiurge seemed to be. Now she's met him and, by her own admission, he's an idiot like everyone else. Annie Wu beautifully closes the issue out along with Jordie Bellaire to tell a tale of Kate and Noh-Varr making awkward smalltalk before she chooses to walk away. As they stand apart, looking at one another again, Speed shows up and yanks Kate away, demanding she dance with him. He has no time to answer her questions about where he's been and how he returned and she decides that she doesn't care anyway. They kiss as midnight strikes on the new year.

Look, I've said everything I've ever needed to see about this book and this issue falls right in line. Kieron Gillen continues to absolutely marvel with his stories and his characters and the realism and depth of his dialogue. The twist that America was born from the Demiurge and the events of this book is incredible and really provides the only true story in this issue, leaving the rest to character interactions and resolutions of relationships. To boot, all of the artists were chosen perfectly and each and every one of them brings their A-game to the issue. I'm so looking forward to the next issue to see what else it holds in store; plenty more great artists will be there but looking at this one will truly make you say "well who else could they possibly have for the next one? This one really covered it all." Great issue all around and there's no doubt that these two issues will be the absolute perfect way to wrap this series, if there was any doubt before.

New Avengers 9, Uncanny Avengers 11, Secret Avengers 8

New Avengers 9
Hickman (w) and Deodato (a) and F. Martin (c)

Thanos' army, led by his Black Order, is attacking Earth and, more specifically, attacking the Illuminati. After the events of Infinity 1, Thanos has learned that most of the Infinity Gems have been destroyed, shattered by the effort it took for Cap to blow up a planet. However, one simply disappeared. It's Thanos' prerogative, then, to hunt for that last gem by interrogating the Illuminati. Reed and Tony, together in New York City, use Stark Tower defenses to take down parts of the invading fleet while members of the Black Order lead squads to the other Earthbound Illuminati members. Dr. Strange is taken captive by the Ebony Maw, Beast and the X-Men are besieged by Corvius Glaive and Supergiant, Wakanda is attacked by Black Dwarf, and Atlantis, struggling after Wakanda's recent attack, is set upon by Proxima Midnight. The battles are fierce and our team wins some and loses some but the most important bits to take from it all is Proxima Midnight offering lenience to the already defeated Atlantis in exchange for information and the way Black Bolt reacts to it all from above New York in Attilan. Namor bows to Proxima, telling her that the Infinity Gem she seeks (and where she should point all of Thanos' troops) is in Wakanda, which managed to stave off Black Dwarf's attack but will have more trouble fighting off the rest of the army. Black Bolt, meanwhile, is ready to put his secret plans in motion.

Plenty happening here to coincide with Infinity 1 (this book, like Avengers 18 though only tangentially related, falls between Infinity 1 and 2, as evidenced by the pretty nifty and useful flowchart at the back of each book) and to push our story forward. We've been introduced to Thanos and his desires (which didn't take much introducing, as this is pretty much what Thanos does whenever Thanos shows up) as well as his Black Order, who will certainly have more to do with the coming story. It's still an interesting story and, as I've said plenty already, there's enough going on here to justify the event. It's really smart to have these two major event-scale things happening in one event because it will, over time, likely make us feel better about the length of the event (in this way, it will almost feel more like two separate events at half the size as opposed to an overly long single event that loses momentum halfway through). As for this issue, it continues the New Avengers tradition of being a solid series with, perhaps, a little less personality than you'd like. The story is still good enough and there are enough character-driven moments to keep things going (like Namor faux-bowing to point Thanos' troops at Wakanda) but the writing for the characters feels a little weaker. On the one hand, I think that the big plot removes some of the insider-feeling this and Avengers had both given, where you'd figure out what was going on maybe halfway through the issue and be left to deduce things yourself. Here, there isn't a ton of subtext; there are characters saying things that advance the plot left and right or that simply summarize bits here and there. It's still a good book but I think the actual writing takes a hit while it opens itself for more plot. Still not bad and it still makes the event feel pretty giant.

Uncanny Avengers 11
Remender (w) and Acuña (a and c)

Eimin and Uriel, with the help of their four horsemen, are moving forward with their plans to save mutants. This plan, unlike the two big plans mutants tend to adopt (cohabitation vs. war with humans), involves separation. Not in the style of concentration camps or anything of that ilk; more in the vein of Utopia or Asteroid X but in a bigger scale. A new planet fully inhabited by mutants, where mutants can be free to use their powers and do what they will while keeping humans on Earth and allowing them to do what they do (which is mostly hate mutants but, you see, fixing that now!). It's an interesting idea for peace though it obviously has its flaws, what with taking mutants by force to this new planet to live and forcing humans and mutants to separate. Also there's the matter of scale of the actual plan, though the twins believe they can combine the sheer power of Wonder Man (trapped by Grim Reaper in a machine of Uriel and Eimin's design) and the abilities of Scarlet Witch to up and move everyone all at once. It's hard to imagine that wouldn't work; Wanda deactivated nearly every mutant's powers with just words. Combined with Wonder Man, she could go greater. Meanwhile, Sentry's gone even crazier but is still strong as ever, if not stronger (certainly stronger in his crazy convictions), and is keeping Thor pretty well occupied off-planet while Daken has, with great ease and relish, killed Wolverine. Yes. That's a thing that happened. Granted, he's Wolverine, he was also killed in New Avengers this week (whoops!) so these things tend to work themselves out.

One of the impressive things about this book is that it seems to continually lose me a little in the middle as so many plot points converge on one another or as we get a little lost in speeches but they always manage to pull me back in, getting me invested even more by the end. This one certainly had a lot going on and needed to keep cutting back and forth a fair amount but started to bog down a little, particularly as Sentry lectured Thor, before leaping back up with the impressive cliffhanger of Eimin and Uriel addressing the world's population and Wanda seemingly consenting to aid them in their plan. Like I said above, the solution they've come up with isn't ideal but it's hard to argue that it's not practical and that, if everything happens the way it's been promised, it's not less bloody. It could still have major ramifications as the superhero community will be suddenly fairly weakened by the loss of so many heroes but it's an interesting idea and certainly an interesting story all the same. One last thing to mention: Sentry said that the Void has been left in the White Hot Room, which is either a weird expression being used nowadays that I'm not aware of or is the same White Hot Room that Fantomex mentioned in Uncanny X-Force.

Secret Avengers 8
Spencer (w) L. Ross (a) and M. Wilson (c)

Mockingbird has been left behind by SHIELD as part of the new Maria Hill-led takeover. It's left Bobbi in a precarious position, though, as she's left on AIM Island in her disguise as biologist Harold Bainbridge. She has no memory of the mission or any sort of briefing on the life that Bainbridge led, certainly not enough knowledge to get out or to call for SHIELD's help or anything. In fact, she's not even convinced she's who she thinks she is. She remembers being Mockingbird and has some inkling that the recent attack on AIM Island by Hawkeye, Nick Fury Jr., and Black Widow has something to do with her but the whole situation is throwing her through a variety of emotions. As the issue ends, she's lasted a couple days on the island by keeping her head down but now she's being dragged into giving a presentation that apparently Harold was supposed to give to the Council. We also get a look at the Council in slightly greater detail so we have a better sense of how AIM Island runs.

This is the first time since Hawkeye was taken captive in the first couple issues that we've seen the ramifications of the memory based espionage. There are several good moments within that and you can understand the choice for making Mockingbird the first significant test of this plot. She's had plenty of issues in her past and her most recent set of issues had to do with being taken and replaced by a Skrull, which is now weighing on her as she begins to consider that maybe she is a Skrull, placed here by Skrull higher-ups to infiltrate. It's not the best explanation and to someone on the outside of this it seems pretty obvious what the real case is, but she's not on the outside of this so her alternate explanation is "I started my day in the gym and then I was here on AIM Island in the body of a 40 year-old man named Harold Bainbridge AND THAT IS NORMAL," which is not great either. The look into AIM Island is kind of interesting but also a little slow. The series as a whole continues to be, for my money, the weakest Avenger book coming out right now but I still have high hopes for it as the ideas aren't bad and this is the first time we've really explored what those ideas are. Still, basing your book around SHIELD isn't really a recipe for success. Not a bad issue, though.

Cable and X-Force 9, All-New X-Men 12

Cable and X-Force 9
Tieri (w) and Larroca (a) and D'Armata (c)

The Uncanny Avengers, after their very brief appearance in the first issue of this series, are back on the case, trying to track down Cable and his X-Force to find out what is really going on and, probably, to try to arrest them all in a big super-hero punch-up. They are diverted, though, as Hope pops up on their radar. She's ditched her SHIELD tail and is on the hunt for Cable as well. Captain America, Havok, and Rogue manage to find her dropping off her foster parents at a bus station (she's controlled them through the drive) and try to get her to understand their position. She listens as they tell her to embrace the idea of having a normal life because it's not frequent that people like her get this opportunity and she should cherish it and so on and so forth. She informs them, though, that there is no such thing as a normal life and she has no desire to have anything that resembles what people might think of as normal and she, instead, intends to help her father because there's no doubt in her mind that things look worse for Cable than they are. The three are unable to stop Hope from wanting to go and, when they start to talk about really stopping her, she uses the powers of the Purple Girl (who she visited in jail after she lost her SHIELD tail and before coming to the bus stop) to get Alex and Steve to fight but Rogue breaks them up and stops Hope, knowing it's hard to control more than two people while borrowing those powers. However, Hope also borrowed Mastermind's powers and creates an illusion of Red Skull for them to fight while she escapes. The Uncanny Avengers are having a hard time with this team thing.

This issue wasn't my favorite, for sure. I don't think it was awful and I think it's probably advancing the plot but I'm not sure an issue dedicated to Hope getting on a bus is a formula for success. Of course, it's likely going to be important that she's heading out to meet Cable and it might be important that she faced off against the UA as they're likely to pop in again at some point, but it's a tough thing to stretch to a full issue. At times, the writing felt a little punchy and there were weird panels where emotions were a little hard to read or maybe a little excessive, which is something that Larroca tends to stumble into but has largely avoided in this run. It did make me wonder if the comic was written as a script or in Marvel style, with the words added in later, because sometimes the images didn't seem to totally match up with the words. Still a better book than most but not the best one.

All-New X-Men 12
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and W. von Grawbadger (a) and Beredo (c)

First off, I think Rain Beredo is the colorist for this issue. That's what the inside credits say, but Marte Gracia gets billed on the cover for something that's usually the colorist spot (and is a colorist). Gracia, the inside credits indicate, teamed with Immonen on the cover. Weirder still, when I tried to do a tiny bit of research to confirm Beredo, I found one place claiming that the cover was Immonen and Leinil Yu. I don't know if that was meant to say that Yu had a variant cover but he definitely didn't do the cover for this issue (seen at left). That's definitely not his style artwork. Look, I'm very confused by this. REGARDLESS, the colors are pretty great in this issue. Anyway, the Uncanny Avengers pop up here too (as if to justify my putting these two books together this week) to confront Wolverine and the all-new X-Men about the crimes being committed that seem to have their fingerprints on them. Wolverine instantly decides that it's Mystique and they all promise to investigate that more. Meanwhile, Alex and the young Scott have a touching reunion wherein they snappy back-and-forth a bit and Alex reveals more of the future to Scott and Jean Grey discovers that Scarlet Witch decimated the mutant population.  This starts a whole thing between the two teams (with the all-new X-Men already being surprised that Wanda is a member of the Avengers and not, as they know her, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and they kind of have to be separated. The Uncanny Avengers fly off in their jet under the assumption that the X-Men will fly home to the school to have witnesses and keep in sight while these crimes are being committed. The X-Men, of course, do no such thing after the UA leave and there's more discussion about the Scarlet Witch as they figure out what to do next.

This series is peppered with people asking why the original X-Men team hasn't yet gone home but no one doing anything about it. Alex asks it of Scott when they're together and Scott says that there's nothing there for them back home. I'm...I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean that they know this is their future so nothing that they do matters because Jean dies and Scott goes evil anyway (and however we want to describe what happened to Angel eventually happens to Angel)? Because, and I know this isn't necessarily a comforting thought to them all, the theory is that Charles will wipe these events from their memories when they get there. Problem solved for everyone. But anyway, while we're here, it feels a little like 12 issues should have been enough for people to stop coming to the old X-Men and saying "wow, you're...you're really them!" It feels like everything should be dedicated to building these characters more/differently or should be advancing the story. That's another issue I have with the snappy back-and-forth: in comics, it's never snappy. It slows down the story and delays us from where we have to go, meaning that we're now 12 issues in and I have no idea where we have to go. Not in like a "I'm so unsure of what twist will hit us next! How will they get out of this one?" kind of way, more in a "what is the story here, anyway?" kind of way. It's not a great place to be. Again though, Immonen's art is almost always great and Beredo (or whoever it is) is knocking it out of the park with the colors.

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.