Review Date: 5/13/16
All New X-men #16 (2013)
Battle of the Atom Part 2
Written by Brian Bendis and Art by Stuart Immonen
So we continue with the insane time-travel shenanigans. It wasn’t bad enough that have X-men coming from the past, now they coming back from the future to prevent the present events from happening. The cover looks like a mess to me, all the future characters are scattered around and out of focus and the monstrous Iceman. (“Is that thing supposed to be Iceman?”. I also guessed which one was Deadpool just based on the red outfit and the katanas) It’s a bit too convoluted, and I guess if I zoom in I can see a bit more detail...but it still seems sketchy to me. I don’t hate the cover, I just don’t like it. I actually enjoy the Immonen variant a lot better, but I could say that for a lot of variant covers. 2/5 for me, now let’s move on to the story.
We start with Scott’s team watching the giant sentinels attack from the last issues.Christopher, one of the new X-men who functions as a healer is freaked out by the fact that he brought Cyclops back from being nearly dead...and complains that the x-men are probably so used to being brought back to life that it wouldn’t seem strange to them. It’s an interesting meta-commentary on how much these comics disregard blurring the line between life and death like it’s completely normal. Meanwhile, Future!Deadpool informs the x-men that they are the x-men from the future. I love how the Icemen (because remember, there’s two of them…) has the same reaction to future-iceman that I had. Xavier from the future pops in to explain that he needs to prevent what happened with the time travel in order to help live up to his father. So, your idea to prevent the time-problems was to travel back to the past? I guess that might work...it worked in Days of Future Past, so why not now? (I’m not sure why he says 'grandpa' if Xavier is his father, but maybe it’s a typo). Again, Iceman echoes my sentiment in saying that it’s very irresponsible for them to just travel back in time. Future Kitty gets to hug wolverine, which is very charming. Then Deadpool shoves her out of the way and smooches him, which is hilarious.
Molly Hayes introduces herself as one of the former Runaways, and Wolverine doesn't really care to recognize her. Eventually, Wolverine starts a fight and chaos ensues. Though, he’s quick to point out that somebody was controlling him. We pull back to Jean becoming paranoid about the future x-men and starting the fight in order to escape them. The pair escape in the Blackbird and fly off to who knows where while the present and future watch. Jean finally starts to vent that she doesn't want to go back because she knows that the past professor will erase her memories...and she doesn't want to lose them. The focus shifts back to the Xorn looking person who is with the future X-men. Rachel points out that Xorn (Magneto) killed jean at the school. Then, this Xorn reveals that they are actually Future Jean Grey...who is now trying to stop her younger self. As someone who read the first part of Morrison’s run, I actually like the Xorn mask despite all the goofy plot twists that have gone with it. Next up in the order is X-men #5 (Which means I’ll probably end up reading 1-4, being the completist that I am).
