CREDIT: Marvel
Rating: 3/5 – The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.
by ComicSpectrum reviewer Adam Brunell.
The war between the Inhumans and Mutants in the Marvel Universe came to an end, and in its wake a whole new lineup of X-Men titles were released. The lineup of titles came across to me like a nod to the old Clint Eastwood movie, “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”. Though some bring a little originality to the X-Men or other Mutants, others feel like a trip down memory lane where a constant rotation of memories keeps coming back up.
Writer Cullen Bunn and Artist Jorge Molina bring X-Men fans and comic book enthusiasts, X-Men: Blue. While historically an X-Men fan, I had some real issues with Bunn’s story, which I’ll detail in a bit. Molina’s art is interesting to say the least. In some spots it seemed a little off to me with remotely thin outlines, which isn’t really a problem, but it pulled my view to minor missing details and that detracted from my reading experience.
X-Men: Blue takes the original five X-Men and has them abandon all other X-Men from the recent timeline. Hank McCoy is now doing a mix of science and magic, Cyclops is still on the Champions team, Iceman is dealing with teenage relationship drama, Angel seems more on the action than anything else, and Marvel Girl is team lead. The team has decided to seclude themselves from the people in the current timeline because of the actions taken during the Inhumans versus X-Men confrontation. It’s the original team again, and it looks like X-23, Ethan, and Idie are no longer with these characters as they were before this new series, like they were just tossed to the side with no real explanation as to why these teammates were tossed, except that the original team wants to only be the original team again. Not only is the team change not fully explained, neither are dangling plotlines like X-23 and Angel no longer being a couple. There appears to be an unexplained gap of time, but everything is directly happening after the IvX altercation. The one big thing that is happening now is that Magneto is acting leader; he doesn’t consider himself their teacher or mentor, just the man behind the curtain. He is leading the original X-Men on a mission to take out specific Mutants that play a big role in changing the world and making a bad image for Mutants everywhere. Like a rotating door, Magneto’s character goes from being a bad guy, to good guy and around again. Though it’s good to see Magneto trying to make Xavier’s original dream a reality, this is a routine plot point we’ve seen before and is not original. By the end of issue #2, readers are supplied with a surprise side story of a future teammate. With the loss of Laura representing the claw wielding berserker fast healer of the group, we are shown a new claw wielding berserker faster healer, and it’s just another Wolverine character.
I had high hopes for the X-Men: Blue title, I wasn’t fully on board with the beginning idea of the original X-Men being brought to the future, but now the same idea is being brought back around. The original X-Men are still in the future, and somehow a specific mutant believes he can send them home. I’m still a little all over the place with how the Marvel Universe lines up with our actual timeline, like a 12 issue year of comics is just a day or week for the comic book world? Either way, the idea of sending the X-Men back to their original timeline is a constant topic of discussion, but even Beast after receiving the power of the Black Vortex had assessed that the possibility to send the original X-Men back in time is not possible, but somehow Magneto is smarter than a galactic super powered Hank McCoy with all the knowledge in the cosmos? I highly doubt that, and this story is so off base with how I expect the characters to be that I’m dropping it from my monthly reads.
Reviewed by: Adam Brunell
(adamb@comicspectrum.com)
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