One of the most anticipated books of Marvel NOW has finally arrived and I have been incredibly stoked on it since it was announced. After all, who doesn’t love a good time travel story? ‘Looper’, ‘Back to the Future’, and ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ rank among the best in the genre, and now former ‘Avengers’ writer Brian Michael Bendis is presenting his own offering to the mix with his new book ‘All-New X-Men’, which did not disappoint me in the slightest.
In a post-AvX world, the X-Men are trying to figure out a way to stop their former teammates lead by Cyclops from causing trouble and wrongly doing things for the “greater good of mutant kind”. In an effort to find someone to talk some sense into Scott Summers, Beast travels back in time to find the one person Scott might listen to: Himself, along with the rest of Professor Charles Xavier’s first class of students.
The first thing that jumps out to me about this story is just how desperate Beast has gotten because of this Cyclops situation. I’ve always looked at Hank McCoy as the voice of reason. He’s the one who would keep the team grounded so that they wouldn’t do anything to overstep boundaries. He’s also among the smartest inhabitants of the entire Marvel Universe. But now, he’s willing to risk damaging the space-time continuum in order to bring the younger versions of himself and his allies to the future. Bendis hasn’t firmly established the time travel rules of his story yet, but almost always there is a consequence for talking to another version of yourself. Hank has to know this, yet he goes and does it anyway. And I’m all for it! Desperate times call for desperate measures, and AvX has apparently turned Henry “Hank” McCoy into a desperate man.
Bendis isn’t the only all-star on this creative team. The art by Stuart Immonen, inker Wade Von Grawbadger, and colorist Marte Garcia is amazing. The latter two artists especially shine in the scene where Cyclops, Magneto, and Emma Frost try to recruit a new member to their team. The blue of the time-stopped scene and the red of Cyclops’ beams particularly stand out to me as artistically epic scenes. In general, I’m not usually a huge fan of Immonen’s style (although I don’t hate it), but with Von Grawbadger and Garcia working with him, I’m finding that I enjoy it much more. To paraphrase something that someone said to me recently, sometimes the colors can make or break a book, and these colors are one of the top things that make it.
Overall, this is an excellent start to what I feel like will be a story to remember. It may be bias because I was a fan of Bendis’ work on the Avengers, but I honestly feel like he’s got a few things up his sleeve for the X-Men that will be legendary.
Final Score:
ALL-NEW X-MEN #1
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Art by STUART IMMONEN, WADE VON GRAWBADGER, & MARTE GARCIA
