Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 1
Thursday, September 19, 2013
[NOTE: While I started this review two weeks ago it’s taken me a long while to get around to finishing it. As such I’m behind on this whole thing, but hopefully I can catch up by the weekend, or at least by next Monday. No promises]
It feels like I just went through an X-Men crossover but technically it’s almost been a year since I did the last review for Avengers vs. X-Men. Still it seems like X-Men: Battle of the Atom sort of sneaked up on me, even though I was well aware of it. But I am interested in it so I’m going to tackle it, thus spamming you non-comic book fans for several weeks (months?) with unwanted comic book rambling. You’re welcome. Anyway X-Men: Battle for the Atom is a new ten part X-Over (as the cool kids call them) that is moving through X-Men, Uncanny-X-Men, All-New X-Men, and Wolverine and the X-Men in addition to its own self-title two-parter. It features the present day X-Men and the time-displaced teenage X-Men from the past facing off with against team of time-displaced X-Men from the future.
Have I mentioned that superhero comics often don’t make a lot of sense?
Normally I like to have pre-blogs that set up these big events but, as I said, this all kind of sneaked up on me and I didn’t have time. There’s not a heck of a lot of stuff you’d need to understand, really only two things, but I do feel we should talk a bit. So let’s do so right now VERY briefly.
Time travel is a very common plot device in X-Men comics, to the point that no less than three X-Men are actually from varying alternate futures. One of the most famous X-Men stories, Days of Future Past, set the stage for the team to have many, many time travel epics…a lot of which were dumb. It’s such a cliché at this point that certain X-Men can just build time machines casually and the team can pretty much go into the future or past anytime they want. It’s really important to note that Marvel Comics' official policy when it comes to time travel in their stories is that when you travel into the past you cannot change history, instead you merely create an alternate timeline (hence why Bishop, Cable and Rachel Summers can all exist in the present). However this is a rule that is broken ALL THE F**KING TIME! It gets broken so many times that in every instance I hear a writer or editor cite this rulewhen justifying something I kind of want to deck them. Bottom line: Battle of the Atom is by far not the first time this plot device will be used and it won’t be the last.
As we saw in AvX #12 and Uncanny X-Men #1 Cyclops, now a fugitive, has become the face of the mutant revolution which has freaked out his former teammates. Beast somehow gets the moronic brilliant idea to kidnap the original X-Men (teenage versions of Cyclops, Beat, Iceman, Angel and Marvel Girl) and bringing them to the present in order to somehow guilt trip Cyclops into surrendering to authorities…or something; it was not a good plan. When this doesn’t work (OH REALLY?!) everyone apparently decides that it’s okay for the teens to just hang out in the present for a while, despite the fact that they’re risking the fabric of reality by doing so. In fact the teens have already have experienced game changing alterations as the team now greatly distrust Teen Cyclops for shit he hasn’t done yet, Marvel Girl dumped him in favor of Teen Beast (Marvel Girl is Teenage Jean Grey so this is very bad) and Teen Angel has abandoned his friends to join the mutant revolution. Good job breaking time and space, modern day Beast.
A review of Battle of the Atom Part One after the jump.
Read More
It feels like I just went through an X-Men crossover but technically it’s almost been a year since I did the last review for Avengers vs. X-Men. Still it seems like X-Men: Battle of the Atom sort of sneaked up on me, even though I was well aware of it. But I am interested in it so I’m going to tackle it, thus spamming you non-comic book fans for several weeks (months?) with unwanted comic book rambling. You’re welcome. Anyway X-Men: Battle for the Atom is a new ten part X-Over (as the cool kids call them) that is moving through X-Men, Uncanny-X-Men, All-New X-Men, and Wolverine and the X-Men in addition to its own self-title two-parter. It features the present day X-Men and the time-displaced teenage X-Men from the past facing off with against team of time-displaced X-Men from the future.
Have I mentioned that superhero comics often don’t make a lot of sense?
Normally I like to have pre-blogs that set up these big events but, as I said, this all kind of sneaked up on me and I didn’t have time. There’s not a heck of a lot of stuff you’d need to understand, really only two things, but I do feel we should talk a bit. So let’s do so right now VERY briefly.
Time travel is a very common plot device in X-Men comics, to the point that no less than three X-Men are actually from varying alternate futures. One of the most famous X-Men stories, Days of Future Past, set the stage for the team to have many, many time travel epics…a lot of which were dumb. It’s such a cliché at this point that certain X-Men can just build time machines casually and the team can pretty much go into the future or past anytime they want. It’s really important to note that Marvel Comics' official policy when it comes to time travel in their stories is that when you travel into the past you cannot change history, instead you merely create an alternate timeline (hence why Bishop, Cable and Rachel Summers can all exist in the present). However this is a rule that is broken ALL THE F**KING TIME! It gets broken so many times that in every instance I hear a writer or editor cite this rulewhen justifying something I kind of want to deck them. Bottom line: Battle of the Atom is by far not the first time this plot device will be used and it won’t be the last.
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| "Stay tuned for 33 years of Marvel recycling this story over and over again" |
A review of Battle of the Atom Part One after the jump.
Read More