All-New X-Men 1: Yesterday’s X-Men

Comic Info

All-New X-Men #1

Reprints All-New X-Men #1-5 (January 2013-March 2013).  Charles Xavier is dead…killed by his former student Cyclops while in the possession of the Phoenix Force.  Cyclops, Magneto, and Illyana have gone on the run, and Beast finds himself dying from his own mutation.  Beast travels into his own past in a desperate attempt to “fix” Cyclops and pulls the younger original X-Men of Iceman, Beast, Angel, Cyclops, and Jean Grey into the future.  As Cyclops, Magneto, and Illyana join Emma Frost in a race to collect the new emerging mutants, the original X-Men find themselves in a nightmare world where they can’t even recognize themselves.

Written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Stuart Immonen, All-New X-Men 1:  Yesterday’s X-Men collects the first five issues of the series.  The series spins out of the Avengers vs. X-Men (AvX) storyline.

All-New X-Men #2

I’m pretty leery of Brian Michael Bendis.  I loved Powers, Alias, Daredevil, and Ultimate Spider-Man but felt he ruined Avengers and much of the Marvel Universe through his big crossover events that have (in my opinion) made much of mainstream comics unreadable.  Likewise, the X-Men have been in a horrible place since the whole move to San Francisco and the Utopia storyline after House of M…this puts All-New X-Men in a precarious position since it has so much going against it.

I was right to be kind of worried about this series.  Though it is good to see some of the younger “pure” X-Men the series in general doesn’t make much sense.  I don’t care about the time travel aspect of the story, but the idea that this will somehow “fix” the future doesn’t make much sense.  The X-Men (more than anyone) know that there aren’t really time paradoxes so much as alternate worlds and each event can create an alternate timeline in the Marvel Universe.  For the characters to act like this really could change anything or if even slaughtering all the young X-Men would have any affect is rather lame and a non-issue.

All-New X-Men #4

The second problem I have with this series is almost all the characters in the story aren’t acting or behaving like the characters that have existed for fifty years.  The renegade X-Men are obviously completely unhinged (and blaming the Phoenix Force is a lame MacGuffin for allowing Bendis to write whatever he wants).  The younger characters and the characters at the school however also aren’t acting like the X-Men of even a couple of years ago.  Poor writing has made characters who were once fun and unique, dull and lifeless over the years.

I like Immonen’s art for the most part but I don’t like the comic book layout.  The story often relies on the “splash” page style art which sometimes has you reading across and other times in classic comic book page.  Unfortunately (I don’t know if it is entirely by the binding’s fault), you can’t tell if you are to read across or down until you’ve already read through half a page.  I know that the artist generally isn’t behind the blocking of a story, but he ultimate gets the “blame” for confusion since he’s the illustrator.

All-New X-Men is a bit of a mess.  It wasn’t very fun and it doesn’t make much sense.  I would rather have had another bout of X-Men:  First Class or X-Men:  The Hidden Years if I wanted to see the X-Men that I do like.  I don’t want to be a “hater”, but I don’t like where this comic goes.  I’ve read worse, but I also read much better.  All-New X-Men 1:  Yesterday’s Heroes is followed by All-New X-Men 2:  Here to Stay.