Thursday, November 14, 2013

All-New X-Men #18

   I have to admit, I didn't expect the original X-Men to stick around this long.

   By which I mean the original team that now has a modern-day comic of their own. They were brought through time from an early point in their career to modern times to form the All-New X-Men, in hopes that they can correct the mistakes being made by the present-day team.

   Now, for mysterious reasons, they're not able to return to the past - and for even more mysterious reasons, their "professor," Kitty Pryde, decides to take the team away from Wolverine's school for mutants, and instead work with Cyclops and the Uncanny X-Men team.

   What's most amazing is... this is the best of all the X-Men comics. (Or at least of the X-Men comics that I read.)

   That's because the characters are fresh and fun, without most of the grinding continuity that just seems to crush the life out of all the X-Men books these days (though even in this book it lurks just over the horizon, ready to crush all the originality at a moment's notice).

   This issue is all about setting the stage, getting the characters set up in their new surroundings, meeting new characters (friends and foes), and... of course... getting new uniforms (though I could have done without the cheap shot at the classic Kirby school uniforms).

   As ever, a fun, breezy script by Brian Michael Bendis, and fantastic art by Stuart Imonen and Wade Von Grawbadger - there's a lot to like here, and I'm curious to see where it all goes from here.

   And I can't help but hope that the team sticks around for a good long while.

Grade: A-

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