The last run of ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’ was so strong that I feel the current run has been stretching to feel even half as entertaining or meaningful for its entire run. There have been some strong overall story arcs such as Eye Boy becoming relevant, Quire becoming the Phoenix, and Evan who is going to become Apocalypse. Speaking of relavent I wonder how this book will continue to be that way at all with Wolverine dying soon. While all of that has been great, it has been set against this horrible view of the Phoenix Corporation which is a bunch of people who have come back in time to prevent (or guarantee) certain events happen.
Seriously. Every single X-Men book has time travel going on right now aside from the ‘Amazing X-Men’. ‘All-New X-Men’ is about mutants stuck in the present from the past and are all fighting the Brotherhood from the future shown to us in the ‘Battle of the Atom’. ‘Uncanny X-Men’ has the same students in Cyclops’ base and they just ended the most recent event from dealing with Dark Beast who is from an alternate timeline but was originally from the future, ‘X-Men’ has Storm’s daughter from the future from ‘Battle of the Atom’. Let’s please move on.
Continuing on from the last issue not much is going well for our heroes. The book opens with an awesome scene that featured Doop and while he isn’t the focus of the book that introduction cracked me up. It felt so perfectly Doop! Skipping past that, we see Evan being threatened and Fantomex owns up to his responsibility and doing everything that he can to keep the boy safe. When all is said and done, Storm has an impressive scene which feels a bit out of place with how on top of things she’s been while running things in the ‘X-Men’ title and for being known as The Goddess. While it was visually (and naturally) striking I kind of felt that it was added as an afterthought with an, “Oh yea, we had Storm active in the first few issues.”
On the other hand Wolverine is not doing well at all and looks like his time could be up prior to the death in his own comic.
Yeah, right.
All in all who comes and saves the day? Cyclops and Quentin Quire jump in to take care of the once unkillable man. I’m wondering if he and Cyclops are going to be buddy buddy or at least have one last serious talk before they end up putting Logan in the ground. I suspect it might have almost happened if the upcoming final ‘The Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier’ from the ‘Original Sin’ crossover doesn’t look as if it’ll shake things up for Cyclops. Which is all he really needs at this point.
I’m torn on the book. While some of the key plot points are truly interesing, there are just as many that I don’t feel that I care about or seem to be nothing more than space filler. I do think that Quire, and ourselves, are about to find out what is actually going on here.
The art and major plot points are all here to make this a great title. Yet, it constantly falls short with sub par side plots and pacing that just feels off.
WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #5
Writer: Jason Latour
Artist: Mahmud Asrar, Matteo Lolli
