by The Wanderer
Authors: Brian Michael Bendis
Illustrators: Stuart Immonen
Publisher: Marvel
Genre: Superhero
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(Spoilers for All-New X-Men Volume One are below).
Yesterday’s X-Men brought the original five X-Men into the future where they’ve met the current X-Men. Taking place after the Avengers vs. X-Men sequence, the younger X-Men learn about their future fates, and they make a surprising decision at the end of the first volume and choose to stay in the future.
The first volume of All-New X-Men really surprised me and gave me a lot of hope for this relaunch. Jean Grey is still struggling to deal with her death, and with the discovery of her psychic powers. Past Cyclops continues to struggle with the knowledge that he murdered his beloved mentor, Charles Xavier. Angel, the only original X-Men that voted to go back to the past, finally meets his future self and with that comes a lot of questions about the future Angel’s new wings. Kitty Pryde continues to train the new X-Men along with the originals, making for a strange dichotomy since Kitty grew idolizing the older X-Men, especially Jean Grey.
Mystique and Sabretooth also join the story for the first time. The latter does little, but Mystique does get to meet the younger version of Cyclops. Their conversation is one of the highlights of the volume. The Avengers also show up and meet the younger X-Men, and they confront Beast about bringing them into the future. The series teases how these new relationships will work given the Avengers’ history with the older X-Men. The X-Men still following the Older Cyclops spend most of the time in the background, only to show up towards the end, and add a new thread to the story.
The second volume isn’t as strong as the first, but these installments are really focused on “character” and “conflict” development. There’s a lot of dialogue and expanding the world; fight scenes are kept to a minimum. The artwork continues to remain solid. There is a slow build heading towards the fragmentation of the original X-Men, and that’s a direction I’d like to see. So where the last volume had a strong conclusion, this volume makes less of an impact. There is a lot of meandering about in these issues, it’s got a “day in the life,” type of feel to it. Some of these “day in the life,” moments work, and others less so. I still believe the series still has a good deal of potential.
Score: 7.0
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