All-New X-Men: Here to Stay

Well, as the title indicates the classic X-Men are here to stay in our own time, where they will have to deal with the Scott Summers/Cyclops-led evil X-Men. Meanwhile, Jean Grey continues to come to grips with her growing psychic powers, people start to question Hank McCoy’s messing with the space-time continuum, Kitty Pryde gets exasperated trying to bring the teenage X-Men up to speed, Angel meets a new friend, Mystique assembles her own gang of supervillains, and Wolverine is angry all the time.

I had a feeling that they were sort of marking time here, especially given that there are two big fight scenes, one a battle with Hydra that feels like a simulation in the Danger Room and the other being a fight against Sentinels that is a simulation in the Danger Room. Neither amounts to much. But overall Brian Michael Bendis keeps the different balls in the air pretty well and the writing is better than average. I particularly like the way Bendis spices up dialogue scenes in interesting ways. In the previous volume it was the two Hank McCoys talking to each other via psychic link-up. In this one we get a heated conversation between Beast and Captain America as filtered through Iceman and Kitty Pride. I thought that was neat.

Unfortunately, I really didn’t like the art from David Marquez (issues #6-8). It felt very generic and crude, with a blandness that seems almost AI generated, and there’s not a lot going on in the individual cells, either in the background or expressed on faces. It’s similar to Stuart Immonen’s work (who did issues #9-10 here), but more cartoonish, if I can make a distinction between a cartoon and a comic style. I can see some people liking it, but it’s not my thing.

Not a great instalment then, but the story interests me and I’ll stick with it for a while. I may not be here to stay, but I’ll hang around for a bit longer.

Graphicalex