X-Men #5 (2013)

X-men (2013) #5 [May 5 2017]

Battle of the Atom Part 3

Written by: Brian Wood and Art by David Lopez

X-men #5 continues the Battle of the Atom event while having some focus on the theme of this volume of X-Men (Female x-men...x-women? Whatever, you get the point). We get some commentary on the situation by Rachel Summers, who is also from the future but disagrees with the future X-men who want to capture the time-displaced Jean and Scott. She helps the young jean and Scott to escape and find refuge with...the present ’Uncanny X-Men’ rogue team. Now the past Cyclops will meet the present Cyclops and his allies again for help. This was the whole point of All New X-men from the start, after all.

I actually think this is a great way to tie the books together while continuing the ongoing narrative of the crossover. For reference, the next book in the crossover is Uncanny X-men, which follows Cyclops’ team. It is kind of forcing the plot to follow the sequence of books, but it’s not a bad way to handle tie-ins (having the characters move from one team to another). There is a nice flow and pace to the story in general. Some people would argue that the crossover took away from the female-led x-men book by forcing this crossover story into it, but I feel like the focus of this book (the female x-men) still had an impact on the crossover. It’s better than completely ignoring those characters altogether when they are meant to be the focus of this book that happens to be crossing over.

We find out future Jean Grey wears the Xorn mask to contain her powers and that future Xavier uses inbuilt Cerebro tech to track mutants. It’s interesting to see these bits of x-men tech be re-appropriated in different ways.

It should also be noted that Bendis wrote the first two issues whereas Brian Wood writes this issue since he regularly writes this series. If that’s better or worse will depend on your opinion of Bendis’ writing.

The character focus that Wood provides is really nice, especially for scenes that show the dynamic between Scott and Jean. Drawing from the original nostalgic timeline, it’s important to remember that they eventually became a couple for a reason, and seeing them being forced to reevaluate their lives based on future knowledge is interesting. How would you feel as a teenager if you knew you were hanging out with your future wife (who would later die twice!). As they point out in the issue, it’s a big complication for the young x-men.   

Besides some cool moments (Like jubilee making the comment about having to adapt to having a child) nothing stood out to me as being super impressive, but I didn’t really hate the issue either It’s slightly above average.

Score: 6.8/10