All New X-men #3-4

I'm really liking what Bendis is doing, so I'm reviewing both his series today! Trying to catch up with Guardians and X-men without reading trades is hard...

Guardians of the Galaxy #10

I didn’t have much to say about the last issues anyway, but the book had Franco Francavillia as a guest artist, it was great, and that’s pretty much the only cool thing. So now instead of steve mcniven we have a great collection of guest artists.

This issue focuses on Gamora and Angela, so that’s pretty interesting considering they don’t like each other much. This is a pretty good one-off issue, almost like a team-up book. A good action issue to be sure, but without much else. The cliffhanger ends with peter saying that they can’t find thanos, and there’s no way he’s on earth (where he was frozen in infinity) because they’d know.

Next, bendis pulls off a crossover between his two books (All New X-men and GotG) with the trial of Jean grey. For now this issue is a 7.5 since it has a bunch of cool action scenes, but does almost nothing to advance the story besides giving angela more dialogue. I almost felt like she talked too much.

Guess it’s time for me to catch up on all-new x-men. Last time I checked I was on issue #3…

All New X-men #3-21

-Probably not going to give scores for these, but I’d go with a baseline 8 or 8.5 for most of these, cause the series is great-

Issue 3

We start by following Scott’s team (from uncanny x-men) as they start to realize that the phoenix

force incident has disrupted their powers. For example, scott loses control of his blasts and destroys a car, and emma can’t even use telepathy anymore!

It’s really torture for Scott since he remembers not being able to control his powers as a child just like now. I mean, his only option would be to blind himself and that’s pretty harsh.

Magneto questions him, saying that he knows what it is like to do horrible things. He thinks that Scott’s will is what was influencing the phoenix, and that he lashed out in anger and killed Xavier.

It really is interesting that Scott is struggling to continue to be a hero and that his values are being twisted.

Magick arrives and informs cyclops that her powers were actually enhanced by the AvX event, so good for her. However, her brother (colossus) is still missing.  When Cyclops arrives at a mutant rally to recruit for his rebel team, he finds the original x-men (from the past) for the first time!

Issue 4

Have you wanted to see the x-men fight the x-men? Well now’s your chance! Cyclops vs cyclops is an interesting fight since at this point scott lost control of his power, and younger scott has much less combat experience. Plus Scott’s got magneto as backup so I think Older Cyclops can win even if he can’t make precise shots.

At first Scott just thinks the original x-men are some kind of psychic attack or even that Xavier is somehow showing him this. Old-School jean actually hears cyclops’s monologue, but she’s not used to it since from what I remember she originally only had telekinesis and got telepathy later. (according to the wiki she got telepathy as part of syncing into the 616 universe and apparently she has stronger base [non-phoenix] powers than the original marvel girl]

Marvel Girl blasts cyclops to the ground after realizing that he killed the professor and that he loves him. Scott blows his older self away and  teleports out with magneto again.

“Cyclops is a [censored] and magneto is a coward? This is our future?” - Classic Iceman

Two new mutants are in the weapon x facility (where cyclop’s team is hiding out) one controls time and the other can heal people, interestingly.

Meanwhile, the 60’s x-men regroup and jean grey still is overwhelmed by the thoughts of those around her because they can’t be shut off. I really like this panel, it’s just shoved full of repetitive annoying word balloons...it’d be terrible to listen to stuff like this all day.

“Evil Cyclops” as the older x-men call him, is pretty mad since he already figured out what is going on..and he’s not sure what to do about it. I love how a lot of emotion is actually carried through the character’s expressions on their face...it’s a great facet of the art. Anyway, the old x-men return to the jean grey school just in time to find out that beast’s mutation is getting out of control and he’s starting to die. The whole reason he sent the x-men back to begin with was because he knew he didn’t have much time left. This issue is a little bit cooler than the others, so it’s a 8.8/10.