ogreart's review against another edition

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4.0

It just keeps getting more and more complicated. I love that! The thought-provoking ways the characters are developing is a joy for me to read. I am having a great deal of fun seeing the X-Men I dimly remember from my childhood dealing with the world of today. I have enough trouble dealing with it and I got here the hard way.

tomesproject's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 stars

Still fun and really kept my attention with all of the battle scenes that we don't get in the first ten issues.

The plot, however, has slowed to an inch-ing pace.

Also, the last issue. I feel like the guest artist was misplaced (?) and was irrelevant to the overall story-line. It brought it new characters to the Marvel Now! series without bothering to explain who they are or where they came from. That last issue felt very out of place and really broke up the continuity of the series. Definitely set this volume back for me.

cassandragon's review

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

charlie_x's review against another edition

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4.0

Still really enjoying this series. Wasn't as keen on the illustrations in #15 but I did like how the X-Men from the past actually looked like kids seeing as they're meant to be 16.

colin_cox's review against another edition

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5.0

One of the more compelling elements of Bendis' All-New X-Men is the essentialist claims Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey make in this collection of books. Scott and Jean are the only two of the original five earnestly concerned about the consequences of returning to their actual time. They, in effect, argue that the terrifying events that define X-Men continuity (a slippery signifier to be sure) cannot be avoided, circumvented, or corrected. The radicality of their position antagonizes a fundamental aspect of time travel narratives. Scott and Jean believe that knowing the future is meaningless; the past is the past, and it cannot be undone.

By adopting this essentialist view of themselves, Scott and Jean voice the limits of heroic intervention in superhero comics. Scott and Jean's position works in direct contradiction to one of the dominant ideologies surrounding superheroes. The ways in which action (i.e. the ability and willingness to act) and agency are fetishized in superhero comics prevents readers from seeing the limits of action and intervention. If anything, characters like Logan (Wolverine) too often articulate the only brand of criticism that seems to exist when action does not work. Logan's position is not unlike the position many conservatives take when market forces don't sufficiently curb the world's injustices and inequalities: we did not go far enough. For Logan, the problem is not action unto itself; he never ruminates over the perceived efficacy of action. By his estimation the mistake, and by extension, the mistakes of many superheroes resides in the relative modesty of their action.

By contrast, Scott and Jean take a different tact. They recognize the futility of superhero action, and by doing so, potentially establish a new ethical frontier. While the presence of the original five X-Men produces a rupture, the X-Men from the present cannot see the boundaries of this rupture. It is not space and time that Scott and Jean disrupt, it is the fetishized notion that superhero action does something positive and meaningful.

*The reference to conservatives and market forces in paragraph 2 is a reference to several conservative appraisals of the Great Recession. They argue the problem was not a lack of government intervention but the existence of too much or any government intervention. As the argument goes, the Great Recession would not have occurred if governments would have allowed capitalism to do what it is designed to do. Too little not too much capitalism was the problem. Thomas Sowell's The Housing Boom and Bust diagnoses the housing bubble's part in this whole affair from such a position.*

crookedtreehouse's review against another edition

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3.0

The continuing adventures of the time displaced X-Men gets a little stale as they drop the Uncanny Avengers into the story to give young Cyclops a chance to meet his brother Havoc. There's also a storyline about Mystique, Sabertooth, and Lady Mastermind (and the Silver Samurai) that is tough to balance with the way those exact same characters are used in Wolverine & The X-Men.

This is a perfectly servicable X-book, but it's kind of a let-down after how wonderful the first two volumes were. It feels like this entire volume is mostly spinning its wheels before Battla Of The Atom.

I recommend ti for Summers family fan-ficers, Uncanny Avengers readers, and people who enjoy low-stakes mutant-centric adventures.

mjfmjfmjf's review against another edition

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3.0

This series continues to be really good. And interesting. Jean Grey written as a person. Jean meeting Rachel. Alex Summers being written as a person. Kitty. But the art is so incredibly awful, it is beyond distracting. And it turns what should have been one of the best of the Marvel Now books into something just plain bad. Call it a 4.5 for the written and a 1.5 for the art.

kbrujv's review against another edition

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5.0

read

gohawks's review against another edition

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4.0

I'm in love with Kitty Pryde in this series. Only Joss Whedon has sone better with female mutants. It's fun to see Kitty as a mother figure to Jean Grey. Jean's conflicted romance with Scott and then Beast is a fun take on the usual dynamics. Also, Angel's fear with the result of his brain-fried future self has interesting reverberations. Hooray for Immonen's pencils! Though sometimes simple, his covers are dazzling.

vulco1's review

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0