X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

Battle of the Atom continues, but fails to answer the biggest question of all: Who the hell would let young!Bobby watch a baby?!?

Anyway, this issue had some epic battles Young!Jean, Emma and the Cuckoo’s against old!Jean. Then the X-Men verses X-Men. As cool as it is to see these fights, you can’t help but marvel at the pointlessness of the whole thing. Why does it seem that recently it’s all ‘vs’ story lines, and not Good Guys vs Bad Guys but everyone versus themselves. Everyone is on the same team, they should be able to be reasonable about this, not get into fights at the drop of a hat. Ugh.

Deadpool was pretty awesome though, continues to be smarter than most everyone gives him credit for. But his story was a lie, so what is the truth? When Magik goes into the future with young!Bobby and young!Beast it looks nearly idyllic. Even the Sentinels are polite. But whatever young!Jean saw in old!jean’s head made her change her mind. Was old!Jean being sneaky and giving her false information? Or information from a certain point of view? Or is the idyllic future harboring a horrible secret?

Finally, it’s starting to get pretty interesting. Let’s hope we get more of this mystery and less in-fighting.

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Well, that was actually a pretty decently happy ending, except maybe for Toad and possibly Broo.

Let’s do a checklist…

• Quire and Idie are dating.
• Broo is back to normal.
• Paige is back to normal (sorta).
• Kade is trapped (until needed again by the writers).
• The White Queen was actually running the whole show (as it should be, not that it’s a good thing).
• Logan isn’t closing the school.
• The two Hellfire leaders are in ‘rehabilitation’.
• Nightcrawler is back!!!

But the problems the characters face is that Paige, after coming back to her senses, might not still have feelings for Toad. It depends when she ‘lost her mind’ and how many memories she retained. If she just can’t feel the same about him as before, that’s going to be heart breaking.

And as much as Idie never forgot about Broo, even after hooking up with Quire, she still doesn’t feel ‘that way’ about him. Poor little guy. But glad to see him back to his senses nevertheless, even if I’m not really all that sure how it happened.

Next through is Battle of the Atom stuff, so we may not see much in the way of movement on this for a couple of episodes. In any case, I like the fact that this major arc didn’t end on a depressing note. There have been far to many of those of late.

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Kade Kilgore is either completely brilliant, or completely deluded. Well, they always say to bet on black…

The entire Hellfire Academy is going down in flames, and ice, and bark… the X-Men are doing a pretty good job of wrecking the place. Mass destruction is something they do quite well.

As for the students, most of them just seem like typical kids who are caught up in something way over their head and don’t know how to back away. It’s good that they aren’t just all painted as vicious, blood-thirsty sociopaths. Even the other teens in the Hellfire Club seem to realize that there is a time to hold ’em and a time to fold ’em. It’s a nice mixed bag, gives the situation a nice tint of realism.

Idie didn’t kill Kade, obviously, so good on her. Maybe she’ll actually grow out of this flagellation phase she’s been in? As much as I liked her and Broo, Quire might be good for her, show her how to live. Of course, Idie could show Quire a few things about self-sacrifice. Speaking of which, I hope Toad knocks some literal sense into Paige.

Being that there is only one issue left of this five-part arc, and Kade has either done something extraordinary or lost his mind… this can only end about fifty different ways.

p.s. bonus points to Warbird fighting Mystique… a gun to a sword fight indeed…

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What school isn’t full of hormonal teens all trying to either kiss or kill each other?

While there is something a little disturbing about Kade wanting to see 14-yr old Idie in the Black Queen outfit, it works because he is not supposed to be likable, or forgivable, or any of that ilk. It’s nice to see him get his face punched, he’s been deserving of that for awhile.

As for Idie, this girl needs some serious therapy. I just hope that the fact she seems to have decided not to kill Kade and instead go help Quire means that there is some progress in that area. Quire, of course, is still falling for Idie and showing he’s not that big a jerk as he likes to pretend to be. Both characters are getting characterization arcs and this is a good thing, nice to see newer characters get treated as, well, characters and not fodder.

Lastly, it’s good to see that Aaron recognizes that something is wrong with Paige and isn’t just mis-characterizing her… cause right now I am really mad at her. Toad needs some love in this, he’s such a heartbreaking character.

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If anyone was going to find a new/clever use for alcohol, it would be Wolverine.

It still kinda irks me that Quire and Idie left willingly and yet are being hunted down to be brought back, when the Avengers Academy kids were kidnapped and pretty much forgotten about. Oh well, such as it is in comics. And it gives a great reason for Lockheed to substatue teach, that’s totally awesome.

The real interesting fact here though is that the Siege Perilous rejected Quire. What does this mean? Will it really pay off? I hope so, cause Quire is just too fun/cool a character not to.

As for Paige and Mortimer, I’m really starting to hate Paige but I don’t think she’s herself, something is definitely wrong. I hope there is a good reason, like mind control or something, and not Aaron screwing up her character.

Man, I hope for a lot of things on this title, but in this case, I think it’s a good thing.

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I can’t really get enough of Mystique lately, she’s been in several titles and has been some of the best parts in those titles. Here she’s really trying to show just how tough she is, how cold and evil, but you can see it in her words that she wants to believe her rhetoric, but the truth is, she doesn’t. Oh, she’s evil, of course she is, but perhaps not as cold blooded as she lets on. It’s subtle work, maybe even something I’m reading into the dialogue, but it’s there nevertheless.

And of course there is Quire, he hasn’t decided if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely, he doesn’t care which he falls under. He’s there to help a friend, that’s it. Whether he’ll end up a super hero or a super villain has yet to be determined, but the fact that he cares about someone other than himself is very telling.

As for Paige and Toad… first, what is going on with Paige? She was already a bit out there when she left, but now she’s completely off her rocker. Something happened to her, but what? After all the wonderful characterizations everyone else is getting… surely Aaron didn’t drop the ball with Paige? There is also the way she’s treating Toad… poor Toad… reduced to janitor again like that’s all he’s good at. Toad better get his due by the end of this arc… that’s all I’m asking…

Oh, and there is the Siege Perilous… yeah, that can’t end well.

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Flashforward issues are inherently flawed. Unless the flashfoward takes place relatively soon and part of the overall arc of the story, then it’s just a lot of fan service and conjecture.

Who knows what will really take place twenty years from now, both physically and in comic-book time. Characters might get killed off, canon relationships may change. Sure, we might cling to the fact that in Gambit’s 3rd series there is a flashforward were Gambit and Rogue are married… but if we’re honest, it may not actually ever happen.

That’s why issues like this just kinda set sour with me. Especially when the writer throws out names like Professor Xorn, Carmen Drake, Warren Worthington IV, Kubrick Quire, Charlene Xavier, Rose Logan, and Summer Grey (really? Summer Grey?). It’s just so annoying in its obvious pan-handling fan service.

Not to mention blantently trying to hint at something big happening but not saying what it was… of course he can’t tell the readers because the writer doesn’t know if in two years Marvel decides to have another House of M or Civil War moment. All this just takes away from the actual story here which might finally be something worthwhile out of the whole Dog Logan fiasco.

For a title that was pretty spectacular for a while there… I can’t help but wonder what happened.

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I forget, were we supposed to care about Dog Logan?

This issue sees the wrap of that storyline… whatever it was… and there was a few interesting things that did come out of it. For one, Eye Boy actually kicked ass for five minutes… it was pretty epic. Quire showed that he isn’t as bad as he pretends to be and continues to be my guilty crush. As for Herman, well, let’s hope he gets whats coming to him.

So, yeah, as much as there was a great scene with the kids right there at the end, this whole arc has been kinda boring and pointless regarding Dog. We also got a bunch of existential crap from Logan that seemed a little meh.

The next issue seems to promise a look at the future of the school… we already got a glimpse of it before but that was a possible future… maybe… we’ll just have to see.

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And here we have Logan acting a little bit more like a teacher should.

Each of his students have something about them that is a problem, that makes them a hard case, and Logan is trying to help them by leading through (good and bad) example. He points out how one’s DNA doesn’t define them to Evan, proclaims ‘Sprite’ aka Kitty as his favorite X-Man ever and tells Jia she could learn a thing or two from her, and gives Iara his Weapon X file to show what going it alone could cost her which is a lesson Logan knows all to well.

These flashbacks really are the best part of this arc so far. Dog just isn’t that interesting of a character. Heck, Iron Mask is a more interesting character than him.

Again, the story is taking some random side character just introduced for the arc and trying to make them the center of attention (like Frankenstein in the circus arc) but it’s just not working. We can’t seem to care as much about them or their motives as we do about the rest of the group of characters that we know a little more about. Even Dog’s massive background dump in the previous issue worked against him because now we know too much and there is nothing left to surprise us.

Well, except Quire getting punched, that was actually pretty cool.

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