X-Men: Battle for the Atom Review

X-Men: Battle of the Atom

Hey, look what we can do with photoshop!

Writers: Brian Micheal Bendis, Brian Wood and Jason Aaron.

Artists: Frank Cho, Stuart Immonen, David Lopez, Chris Bachalo, Guiseppe Camuncoli and Esad Ribic.

Collects: All-New X-Men #16-17, Uncanny X-Men #12-13, Wolverine and the X-Men #36-37, X-Men #5-6, X-Men: Battle of the Atom 1-2/

Background Information:

Okay, the short version of X-History is this; after House of M, the mutant population was shaved down to 200. This put a lot of strain on the X-Men, and the team soon divided into two; the Uncanny X-Men, led by Cyclops, and Wolverine's X-Men running the Jean Grey School for mutants. A while later, when the Pheonix Force came to Earth, Cyclops was infected with it, and, drunken with power, he killed Charles Xavier. Now Cyclops and the Uncanny X-Men are on the run, and Cyclops is regarded as a kind of "new Magneto".

To help Cyclops recognise the error of his ways, Beast brought the original five X-Men; younger versions of Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast and Jean Grey, to the present to show the current Cyclops what an evil twerp he is.

So far, it hasn't worked.

Review:

Rule of thumb: time travellers are twits.

They're always messing with the space-time continuum, enforcing dodgy agendas and generally X-Men: Battle of the Atom; the second time-travelling story for the X-Men is about as many years. It's pointless diversion that makes very little sense.

Quick, guys! Do that thing you had just decided to do! PHEW,
dodged a bullet, there.

being not very nice about anything. Such is the case of

And it's awesome.

So, the All-New X-Men run into the Uncanny X-Men while trying to take down a new mutant (who does not matter to the story in the least- thank goodness). In the process, young Cyclops gets temporarily killed (temporarily is the key word, because comics), which temporarily removes old Cyclops for existence. When all is fixed and the X-people decide that they youngsters need to be sent back to their own time after all in come a bunch of Mutants from the future, claiming to be the new X-Men. They have an important message for the X-people of today; wait for it... the young X-Men need to go back to their own time!

Lucky someone told them that... they were CLEARLY having trouble figuring it out for themselves.

Okay, Brian Michael Bendis writes more than half of this book and if you're reading his work, you're NEVER doing it for the plot. You're reading it for dialogue and characterisation and Bendis excels at that. The whole book is filled with some of the best dialogue you're likely to see in a Marvel comic. A standout here is Iceman (actually, all three of them). Bendis ramps up the silly in Bobby Drake's character to the point where nearly everything that comes out of his mouth is dripping with humour. Bendis also continues to build on the characters in both Uncanny and All-New in ways that feel organic. Emma Frost's jealousy of Jean Grey finally comes to a head, the romantic triangle between Jean, young Cyclops and young Beast continues to develop and the lack of trust between Wolverine and old Cyclops just keeps simmering.

Thankfully, Jason Aaron and Brian Wood do enough to keep the plot going, And there is a lot that happens here. Moments of note include the mental fight between Jean Grey, Xorn, Emma Frost and the Stepford sisters; it's wonderfully drawn and oozes of tension. Maria Hill's regular declarations of how much she hates Hank McCoy is also fun. Oh, yeah; and Dazzler becomes the president in the future- wow. These moments all come together in a story that feels fun, epic and mostly self-contained.

And therein lies the problem. If Bendis and Co designed this story to be a way to keep interest in the X-Titles, Battle of the Atom isn't going to do that. The book couldn't feel more like a jumping-off-point for the X-franchise if it tried. True, there's a possible future for All-New, but not one that sounds patricularly compelling.

Hmmm... is this a bad thing?

Speaking of All-New, this is very much a book about that particular series. As such, all of the virtues and vices of All-New are present. We get to see innocent idealism shown as a strength, but we also have to have our brains melted by the logical fallacies induced by time travel. We get the young X-Men, but we also get reminded that Marvel doesn't care much for the X-Men anymore. We get great character drama, but we also get dialogue that goes on, and on, and on.

There is, however, no dowside to the art. There's a lot of artists here; something that comes naturally with multiple-title crossovers, and that normally leads to a comparison to what happens with too many cooks. Here, though, it works. No artist is doing less than whole issues and their styles somehow flow with the storytelling. It's great to look at and at no point does a change in artist feel like a change in quality.

Battle of the Atom may not be perfect, but it's damn fun. It gets a three and a half out of five time-travelling twits.

*** 1/2

+ Focus on All-New X-Men.
+ Character Drama.
+ Great art.
- All the negatives you saw in All-New.
- More of a jumping-off point, even though it isn't meant to be.

Alternate Option: X-Men: Schism

Another X-Character drama.

Uncanny Avengers Vol.1: The Red Menace (Marvel NOW!) Review

Uncanny Avengers Vol. 1: The Red Shadow (Marvel NOW!)

"So, who's the tall guy taking this photo?"
"Shuddap, we're Avengers!"

Writer: Rick Remender

Artists:  John Cassidy, Oliver Copiel, Laura Martin.

Collects: Uncanny Avengers #1-5

Background Information:

Marvel NOW! really got kicked off by an event called Avengers Vs X-Men- it’s exactly what it sounds like. The X-men, through contact with the phoenix force (remember in the third X-Men movie how Jean Grey went nuts? It’s the force that makes that happen), became a little more nasty than usual and the Avengers, being the more popular franchise, save the day by defeating them.

Uncanny Avengers is the first official book of the Marvel NOW! line and focuses on the fallout of Avengers Vs X-Men. The world now hates mutants even more than they used to and the man most dedicated to stopping that, Charles Xavier, is dead.

Dead as a doornail.

A dead doornail.

Okay, I’m drifting off a bit. Back to the review!

Review

Much like Justice League in DC’s New 52, Uncanny Avengers is Marvel NOW!’s flagship title. And like  Justice League Vol. 1: Origin was enjoyable, but less-than stellar, The Red Shadow is entertaining, but ultimately feels like it’s going nowhere.

No matter what powers other heroes may
have, they'll NEVER be able to throw
Optimus Prime at bad guys.

So humans hate mutants. That’s bad, in case you were wondering. And you know what? Captain America thinks it’s bad to. So he assembles a group of Avengers made up of equal part mutants and superpowered humans- a symbol of human/mutant unity. In the meantime, though, WWII baddie the Red Skull has removed the brain of Charles Xavier and is forming his own team to spread hatred and intolerance for mutants.

Call it a spanner in the works.

Okay, so the first thing to like about The Red Shadow is the choice for the cast of characters. Rather than ride the wave of popularity that characters like Captain America and Thor, Uncanny Avengers really makes this book about the mutants; Cyclops’ brother, Havok takes centre stage as the leader of the new team, while the most character drama happens between Rogue and Scarlet Witch- two mutants who can’t trust each other as far as they can throw each other. Even Wolverine- who has been in both the Avengers and X-Men camps- plays a relatively small role. Don’t get me wrong, Captain America, Wolverine and Thor all have major moments in the book, but this isn’t their book by a long shot.

Choosing Havok as team leader was a really interesting choice. There are a ton of more popular characters in the X-Men that could have lead the team, Beast, Colossus, Storm, Iceman, Gambit, the list goes on, really. It was great to see writer Rick Remender utilise such a left field character and make him feel like he really mattered to the overall story. He goes from not being sure about his ability to lead the group to being annoyed when Captain America tries to lead the team behind his back. It’s a great amount of character development for someone who was always considered to be the less interesting of the Summers brothers.

However, the story feels like it doesn’t go anywhere. This has to be the only Marvel story I’ve ever read where Thor can go mad and attack the rest of the team, where Red Skull can drive the world’s population mad and it still somehow feels like it doesn’t amount to anything. The main story arc is over too soon, and for all of the character development, there’s nothing here that really hooks you on to the second issue.

Hey, you guys remember that story
that is much better than this one?

The art is also a problem here. It’s not bad, but Marvel NOW! has made its mark by letting each artist leaveHawkeye and All-New X-Men feels distinctive and looks fantastic. It seems strange, therefore, that the art in The Red Menace looks like typical comic book fare. This isn’t helped by the fact that Red Skull’s team is composed of possibly the ugliest, most ridiculous-looking supervillains that I have ever seen. Thankfully, some clever panel design alleviates some of the otherwise unspectacular art. One of the best scenes involves Red Skull describing his plans for mutant genocide against a scene that very closely resembles the classic cover of X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’s a nice touch that will resonate with older readers, even if new ones may be confused.

their own distinct mark on the series they work on really look distinctive. The art in books like

The Red Menace is a book with plenty of potential, but it’s far from the best first outing that Marvel NOW! could have had. It gets a four out of five dead doornails.

****

+ Nice to see an Avengers book that doesn’t focus on the main Avengers.

+ Choice of characters is spot on.

+ Havok makes an interesting leader.

- Art looks too standard to be interesting

- Some awful bad-guy designs.

Alternate Option: New Avengers: Everyone Dies

Another Marvel NOW! Avengers book, if you want another one.