2018.045 Astonishing X-Men Vol 1: Life Of X

Astonishing X-Men Vol 1: Life Of X
Written by: Charles Soule
Illustrated by: Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Guillermo Ortego, Walden Wong, Mike Deodato Jr, Ed McGuinness, Carlos Pacheo, Rafael Fonteriz, Ramon Rosanas, Mike Del Mundo
Marvel Comics

2018.023 X-Men Gold Vol 3: Mojo Worldwide

I guess that technically, this is actually both X-Men Gold AND X-Men Blue vol 3.  It's the first official crossover between the two books.  I thought it might be too soon for that to happen, but after reading it, I was wrong.  I didn't feel shoehorned in.  It felt right.  And that's the way to do a crossover.

I love that the book starts out with the X-Men teams doing what the X-Men teams love best.  Playing baseball.  And like any X-Men baseball game, it never ends well.  This time it ends with an attack on NYC by Mojo.  He's back, he's looking to make a lot of trouble for the X-Men.  And why?  For big ratings, of course.  It's scary how the concept of Mojo and our current administration have more than enough in common to be comfortable.  

What I love about this particular story is it gets to be nostalgic without actually being nostalgic.  Mojo puts the various teams of X-Men through a series of their "greatest hits."  And it's fun.  Plus, we get the return of long time X-Men ally and member, Longshot.  You can't ask for much more.  Honestly.

X-Men Gold Vol 3: Mojo Worldwide

Written by: Marc Guggenheim, Cullen Bunn

Illustrated by: Mike Mayhew, Marc Laming, Diego Bernard, Jorge Molina

Marvel Comics

181 X-Men Blue Vol 2: Toil And Trouble

Still my favorite of the Blue & Gold X-Men books.  Cullen Bunn seems like he's having a ton of fun with this.  I wasn't happy with the direction he was taking the Beast, but it appears to be resolved and hopefully he can get him back on track.

X-Men Blue Vol 2: Toil And Trouble

Writer: Cullen Bunn

Artist: Cory Smith, Joey Vazquez, Thony Silas, Terry Pallot, Giovanni Valletta, Scott Hanna, Douglas Franchin

Marvel Comics

169 X-Men Gold Vol 2: Evil Empires

The first volume fell flat for me.  This volume shows some improvement.  Enough that I'll stick around for a little while longer.

X-Men Gold Vol 2: Evil Empires

Writer: Marc Guggenheim

Artist: Ken Lashley, Lan Medina, Jay Leisten, Luke Ross

Marvel Comics

131 & 132 X-Men Blue Vol 1: Strangest / X-Men Gold Vol 1: Back To Basics

This is the first time I'm throwing two books into the same entry.  It seemed fitting to me, though.  X-Men Blue & X-Men Gold are the new X-books, setting the stage for the post Inhumans Vs X-Men event.  These books give me a very mixed outlook for the future of the X-Universe.

Let's start with Gold.  Kitty Pryde has taken leadership of the team.  She's assembled a small, but mighty, team of heavy hitters.  Colossus, Nightcrawler, Story, Old Man Logan and Rachel Summers, though now she's known as Prestige.  This book is one I was looking forward to more than the other.  It's the real, current X-team.  This should be good.  Marc Guggenheim is writing it.  I love his work.  This book felt like one giant fill in issue.  Nothing felt like it should.  Like he wanted to tell a story, but didn't want to disturb anything else that might be going on in the Marvel U.  It's weird.  It's a fine story, but it felt unnecessary.  I hope this changes with the second volume, or I'm done with it.

Conversely, X-Men Blue was the book I wasn't really hanging much hope on.  It's the time displaced original X-Men.  They were fine during Bendis' run, but can't they go home again.  But Cullen Bunn shows how you start a new series.  He's got a mission for the team.  He's got subplots he's slowly laying down.  He's setting his pieces all in place for when he needs them.  He's not discarding any history.  This is going to be my X-Men book, I have a feeling.  Excellent job, Mr. Bunn!!!

X-Men Blue Vol 1: Strangest

Writer: Cullen Bunn

Artist: Jorge Molina, Matteo Buffagni, Ray-Anthony Height, Julian Lopez, Jose Marzan Jr, Walden Wong, Cory Smith, Ramon Bachs, Marc Deering, Tarry Pallot

Marvel Comics

X-Men Gold Vol 1: Back To Basics

Writer: Marc Guggenheim

Artist: Ardian Syaf, Jay Leisten, Craig Yeung, R.B. Silva, Adriano Di Benedetto, 

116 Uncanny X-Men: Superior Vol 4: IVX

Alright, I'm going to say it.  The last six months or so of the X-Men books have been completely squandered.  Due to the IvX thing no one asked for nor wanted, the regular X-Books were kind of put on a creative hiatus while still being published.  Like the other X-Books I've read, this volume is nothing but stand alone stories that don't interfere with the IvX series.  These stories aren't bad.  I think Cullen Bunn had a great run with the X-Men, but it feels like a waste of time to me.  I'd rather the creative teams be left to do what they do best instead of putting out these inconsequential stories.  But that's just me.

I'm just glad after this, the whole IVX crap will be done.

Uncanny X-Men: Superior Vol 4: IVX

Writer: Cullen Bunn, Anthony Piper

Artist: Edgar Salazar, Ed Tadeo, Ken Lashley, Anthony Piper

Marvel Comics

113 Extraordinary X-Men Vol 4: IvX

The latest era of X-Men is coming to an end.  I'm not disappointed.  The whole Terrigan Mists era of X-Men feels like it was more a placeholder than anything else.  Like, "we just came off of the Bendis run but we don't know what to do with the X-Men.  Let's push our Inhumans hard, poison the air and let the X-Men figure things out while we try to find a direction for the book."  That's what the last year or two have felt like to me.  But it's ending.

This book has a lot going for it.  Lemire!  It's an Inhumans vs. X-Men tie in, but it has almost nothing to do with that series, which is fine by me.  What we have here are four stand alone character driven stories, focusing on a different X-Man.  Forge, Storm, Old Man Logan and Magik.  Jeff Lemire makes it work in the context of the big, awful crossover.  There's really nothing he can't do.

Also included in this book is X-Men Prime, the latest version of "let's start things all over again."  Kitty Pryde is back and she's in charge of the team.  I hope this leads to a strong direction for the X-Men.  It's something they've been lacking for a while now.

Extraordinary X-Men Vol 4: IvX

Writer: Jeff Lemire, Mark Guggenheim, Greg Pak, Cullen Bunn

Artist: Eric Koda, Victor Ibanez, Andrea Sorrentino, Tom Palmer, Ken Lashley, Ibraim Roberson, Leonard Kirk, Guillermo Ortego

Marvel Comics

061 All-New X-Men: Inevitable Vol 3: Hell Hath So Much Fury

This volume of All-New X-Men: Inevitable could be named Interlude.  Not a ton goes on, but it's a nice break before the next story arc.  The first few chapters all take place over the course of the same night, each focusing on a different character or group of characters.  Wolverine gets out of the headquarters to bampf around on some missions, only to find out her boyfriend, Angel, has beaten her to the punch.  Idie and Kid Apocalypse take Iceman out so he can meet boys.  After failing miserably, he does meet an Inhuman and they kind of sort of hit it off.  Cyclops is still wheelchair ridden and going stir crazy after the events of the last trade.  He goes from playing video games to battling demons Beast may have inadvertently unleashed. Finally, the team converges as Goblin Queen shows up to test them.

It's a fun book with some real character driven moments.  And it's laying the groundwork for a big battle with the Goblin Queen.  Which I find intriguing since at one point in time, she was married to older Cyclops.  Seeing younger Cyclops battle her could prove to be an interesting thing.

All-New X-Men: Inevitable Vol 3: Hell Hath So Much Fury

Writer: Dennis Hopeless

Artist: Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessy

Marvel Comics

043 Extraordinary X-Men Vol 3: Kingdoms Fall

I whined about the state of the X-Men Universe a few posts back.  As enjoyable as this book was, the whole Terrigan Mists are poison to mutants thing is really getting old.  Marvel needs to get it's shit back together and get back to basics with the X-Men rather than being pissy babies about not having the movie rights and treating the teams as the green-eyed step children of the Marvel U.

That being said, I like the make up of this team.  The team is home based in Limbo (because Terrigan Mists... sigh).  The first story is about (a) trying to save Colossus from the grip of Apocalypse and (b) a cross dimensional demon trying to take over Limbo.  It was a fun romp despite losing an X-Man.  The second tale was about trying to save two imprisoned mutants from (sigh) a Terrigan Mist cloud.  And then a third (fun!!!!) story featuring Forge and Moon Girl.

I hear Jeff Lemire is done with Marvel, and I'm not sure if this is his last X-Men collection or if there's more in the pipeline.  But I'm sad because he writes a good book.

Extraordinary X-Men Vol 3: Kingdoms Fall

Writer: Jeff Lemire, Ollie Masters, Brandon Montclare

Artist: Victor Ibanez, Guillermo Mogorron, Carlo Barberi, Walden Wong, Rose Kampe

Marvel Comics

026 Uncanny X-Men Superior Vol 3: Waking From The Dream

I've been an X-Fan since way back when.  I was a big fan back in the day.  These days my interest comes and goes.  Probably because Marvel just doesn't know what the fuck to do with the X-Men.  Once they pick a direction, it comes to a screeching halt, all the books are started over and all the creative teams are new, all the X-Men teams are new and we start from scratch again.  (And to be fair, it seems like that's the way with all their books, but X-Men and Avengers especially.)

The X-book is written by Cullen Bunn, whom I genuinely like despite how uneven he can be.  I love him on this book, I HATED him on Aquaman.  It's weird how someone can write something so readable and turn around and write something you can't make heads nor tales of.  Anyway, Cullen Bunn's team of X-Men consists of Magneto, Psylocke, Sabretooth, M, Angel, Mystique and sometimes Phantomex.  Basically all bad asses with attitudes and chips on their shoulders.  And the dynamic of this team works well, even though it seems like it shouldn't.

My one big gripe about this series is Marvel has gone out of it's way over the last two decades of destroying the character of Angel.  Even in this book they really seem to have no idea what to do with him, nor how to fix him.  I wish they would make that a priority because even putting him in any X-book seems like a waste to me.

Hopefully this version of Uncanny X-Men will survive a little longer before it's rebooted into a completely different book with a different line-up and a different motivation.

Uncanny X-Men Superior Vol 3: Waking From The Dream

Writer: Cullen Bunn

Artist: Greg Land, Ibraim Roberson, Jay Leisten, Wade von Grawbadger

Marvel Comics