Let’s be honest here. It’s been a while since Scott Summers was a genuinely nice guy, if such a guy ever existed in the Marvel Universe.
That’s exactly why this title should be good, at least for the first few arcs. We’ve already established the fact that current era version of Scott Summers is a soulless husk of a man who killed his surrogate father in the heat of his war against the Avengers.
Now that his old pal, Beast, has brought their younger selves and the younger versions of their original teammates to the present, how will things turn out for all of them? To top it off, prolonged exposure to the Phoenix Force has turned the tables on the Phoenix Force Five and Magneto by diminishing their powers.
The beauty of Brian Michael Bendis’ writing on this title is that once he gets the pen to paper, the story just flows. There are some beautiful dynamics here, especially between Cyclops and Magneto.
We see that Scott has fallen with the wrong side of the coin face-up as he and Erik share more than just a somewhat aggressive view of mutant-kind’s place in the hierarchy of species. The issue is sort of dialogue-heavy in several parts but most of it works out well. The key issue in the dialogue is as much how they’re speaking to each other as what’s being said.
The only thing that holds the issue back in terms of writing is that we only ever see one group of mutants until the very end. I’d liked to have seen the fallout from young Jean using her powers for the first time against Logan. Even a page of Logan waking up would have sufficed. That’s the only thing missing from the book at all.
The pencils from Stuart Immonen are fantastic on every panel and page. This is made even more so by the additions of Wade Von Grawbadger’s inks and the color enhancements from Marte Gracia. This art team has really hit their stride early on, and it doesn’t look like they’re gonna tire any time soon.
While there aren’t as many action sequences here as there are in other X-books, what there is has been illustrated to near-perfection. The colors made the explosion extra awesome. The little things were done well too, like the way the X-Men’s powers were displayed, especially Magneto’s.
Typically you just see police cars floating in the air, but thanks to Immonen and the others, readers can see his powers tweaking and creating new magnetic fields around objects. There’s nothing wrong with the art. Let’s just leave it at that.
This one gets a 4 out of 5. What holds it back is that there really should have been more X-Men in there. If you’re not reading this, shame on you.
All-New X-Men #3 (2012)
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Marvel
Words: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Stuart Immonen
Inks: Wade Von Grawbadger
Colors: Marte Gracia
Letters: Cory Petit
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