If Bendis is doing so well writing about people out of time you may wonder how he would be at writing them out of dimension? Well, the events in ‘All-New X-Men’ #31 look to answer that as we kick off an unlikely crossover event! Interestingly enough, I almost feel that the events from last issue between Laura and Angel were more in the foreground than the event that is happening here. Clearly their little fling isn’t going to be just a one night stand. It’ll be interesting to see how Scott Summers reacts when he finds out that one of his friends has hooked up with his crush whenever he gets back to Earth.
Bendis kicks things off in the Ultimate Universe with the portal between the 616 and theirs going critical. Honestly, I’m a little surprised this is still up and active without anyone from either side having been trying to use it lately. You’d think at the very least, a few may have though about bailing when a certain giant purple world eater was about to take out their planet. Still, we get to see the Ultimate version of Amadeus Cho and Tony Stark here so I suspect we’ll be seeing them again during this event.
Asrar covers his art well for most of the book though there was something off about some of the panels. I’m not sure if it was the coloring or a lack of detail but this didn’t seem to be up to his usual standard.
As I said above, this is clear a setup for something going on in the Ultimate Universe, but the interesting aspect was how Angel and X-23 aren’t only cozy together but that the team all picked up on it and no one lets it drop. There are a few requests for details but no real teasing is done aside from Jean to the both of them. It felt oddly like the classic Jean and not at the same time.
They wrote Kitty out of the current story pretty easily with the ‘Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier’ issue going on in ‘Uncanny X-Men’ which left the kids alone to play. Play turned into investigation turned into a huge wreck. There is a big splash page cameo at the very end which, if you’ve checked out upcoming covers ahead of time, some already knew about. With that in mind. it felt that the journey to get to that last panel took a little too long. Maybe if the first pages didn’t show off that the Ultimate Universe was related to the story and they didn’t advertise covers ahead of time. it would have been a truly epic way to close the book but instead, it felt like that should have been about the third page in.
Totally out of left base, but I just had a thought. What if these young X-Men are having so much trouble getting back to their own time period not because they are having issues going back to the 616 universe’s past but because they can’t get back to their own universe’s past? Did Hank mess up this entire time and we’re actually seeing mutants from another universe’s past and could the events of this comic be the beginning of what ends up finally sending our young mutants back home?
While not a perfect issue, I’m looking forward to seeing the All-New X-Men interact with the Ultimate Universe. It’ll be interesting if they get to see the Ultimate versions of themselves, well those that are alive which aren’t going to be that many when you think about it. Still, it is a tradition for the X-Men to universe hop so you could almost take this as an unofficial coming of age story and I can’t wait to see it play out on page.
ALL-NEW X-MEN #31
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Mahmud A. Asrar
