All-New X-Men: Yesterday’s X-Men

I read this just after finishing the first Marvel Masterworks X-Men volume, which turned out to be a help. That’s because what happens here is that the original/classic X-Men are brought via time machine into the present day (post Avengers vs. X-Men storyline) by Dr. Hank McCoy, where they have to square off against the rogue Scott Summers/Cyclops. So having the X-Men’s origins fresh in mind helped me understand the teenage X-Men characters and their motivations a little better. Plus there’s actually a scene here set in an earlier comic (it’s from X-Men #8, which came out in 1964) that I only remembered because it was included in the Masterworks volume. I thought that was neat.

The old X-Men (who are, paradoxically, the “all-new” X-Men) facing off against the formerly new X-Men (or what’s left of them) makes for a showdown with lots of dramatic potential. How will the old X-Men deal with what’s happened to them? What will Scott Summers do when he confronts himself? How will Cyclops and Wolverine react to seeing Jean Grey (a teenage Jean Grey!) come back to life? You won’t have to wait long to find out!

A great concept then, and Brian Michael Bendis delivers a solid story with lots of interesting wrinkles, like young Hank McCoy trying to save old Hank McCoy’s life by way of a psychic link provided by Jean where the two McCoys can talk to each other. Alas, some stuff, like the young X-people who are introduced, aren’t as interesting, however necessary they may be to the story. But overall I thought this was a great launch for the “all-new” series. The only thing that really got on my nerves was the “AR” codes that appeared on several of the pages. Apparently these can be scanned on your phone using some Marvel app giving you bonus features. So sort of like Easter eggs on a DVD, except they’re marked for you. The AR stands for Augmented Reality (sheesh) and apparently it represents “the future of comics in action!” Spare me. And spare the comics being stamped with these annoying logos.

(As a footnote, it’s interesting that in X-Men #100, written by Chris Claremont and appearing all the way back in 1976, the story involved a showdown between old X-Men and new, though it was revealed in that comic that the old X-Men were actually X-Sentinel robots. The idea has a history then.)

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