Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
All-New X-Men #3
Marvel Comics
Bendis, Immonen, Von Grawbadger & Gracia
All New X-Men hits a snag in its third issue as Bendis takes a detour from the story he was building in the first two issues. This particular issue doesn't really suffer terribly from the shift, but it does suffer with the voices that Bendis gives the characters. Overall the book is a good but not great read. This comic book represents many of the concerns I had with the prospect of giving such a large cast this finite a point to center on. I think this issue could have been better.
We left off the previous issue with the X-Men from the past en route to confront Cyclops of the present. However, this book ignores that plot development almost entirely as it hooks back to show how Cyclops of the present breaks Emma out of confinement and then deals with the relationship fallout from Cyclops and Emma. The book also introduces the idea that the X-Men of the present have their powers reduced due to the Phoenix Force during the Avengers Versus X-Men event.
The primary problem with this concept is that Emma's breakout was already established across the Marvel Universe as simply happening off-panel. I'm not sure anyone was looking for that story to get told and I doubt anyone needed it to occur over the course of half an issue in the middle of another story.
The Emma breakout allows Bendis to flesh out the idea that key X-Men have had their powers messed with, presumably from the Phoenix Force. This is a convenient plot devise but it seems unnecessary as the key to this story is how Cyclops will react with the Cyclops of the past and not what powers Magneto does or doesn't contain.
Story elements aside, the main problem I had with this book was the odd dialogue nearly all of the characters had throughout the book. I have noticed this with many of the Marvel NOW! books, specifically the Jason Aaron Thor book, where the characters don't speak at all like the previous creator's established portrayal of the characters. Emma, Magneto, Magik and so on, all use words and sentence structure that is totally foreign to how they've been pushed across for the past several years. Editorially it's not a good idea to truncate the near term history of the character in this way.
The artwork helps to make this book something to pick up. The book has a lot of drama and the artwork portrays this nicely. The line work seems to leave a less detailed look to the book but I kind of like the way the lines blur a little bit rather than show a crisp look to the pencils. The color palette presents a dark mood that also matches the story. Artistically this comic book has a nice flow to it and is a very good visual story.
The All New X-Men looks to turn in a better issue based on the cliffhanger here. I liked the character interaction and the long term potential for the power reduction of the mutants. I couldn't find the characters voices to be in-line with how I think of them, which was a major turn off. Overall the book was good but not nearly as good as the previous two issues.
3 out of 5 Geek Goggles
