• Generation X was everything I have been missing from the X-Men relaunch thus far. I'm so excited to see where they go with this cast. Getting Broo again made me squeal.

    X-Men Gold continues to be a resounding "meh". I'm interested in this threat to the team, but I've yet to feel any investment in the story.

    Mighty Thor was absolutely wonderful. I'm still wrapping my head around the exceptional art and the way they played with the Phoenix's flames. I'm scared at the hints it may be heading towards a conclusion, though. All good things, I guess.

    My comic shop oversold on Squirrel Girl :/ I'll have to make sure it is properly pulled for me in the future and go hunting for a copy elsewhere.

  • I'm intrigued that they mention The Brotherhood & the X-Men by name. It at least implies this is in something movie adjacent.

  • Yes! The handwave on Pyro/Avalanche was infuriating.

  • Yeah. I'm thinking this is just an attempt to really lay out their new (old?) status quo, but I hope it spins up here soon. I think back to Morrison, Whedon, Bendis, and some other recent "post shake up" authors and their first outings. They usually did a good job of quickly hooking you. I'm just not getting that here, though, and found I struggled to be invested at all in this last issue.

  • Jean Grey #1 was a great start. Brief reminder of her other self's status quo, who this Jean is, what she wants, etc. and with a clear intent to visit upon this Jean's experiencing of the major milestones. I cannot wait for Jean, Quentin, Rachel, and Hope to be in a room together next issue.

    Gold really just seems kind of...flat. I don't feel the stakes. The team chemistry seems off. Kitty dismissing the younger, clearly proven X-Men is just mind boggling. I get she doesn't want anyone hurt or killed, but their foes hadn't actually killed any of them yet. It's not really bad, but it isn't really good either.

  • I think the Shi'ar gods were just enacting whatever their cylical-ish "End of Creation" myth was, a la the Norse gods toeing the line with Ragnorak all the time. Making out and saying "end it all is" IS a pretty X-Men way to bring on the Phoenix. Granted the Merlyn stuff was written before the Phoenix upgraded to being this cosmic force of creation vs. just a super powerful multi-dimensional entity (and got 'force" tacked on), so that may have been before anyone tacked it up on "God" level.

    I'm actually really hoping THIS is where the Phoenix makes Quentin its host, because that turns out to be the only way to contain it. And then Quentin realizes he actually cannot control it at all and is stuck with it. And only person in existence right now who could teach him to control it is Rachel/Prestige, someone he despised as a teacher before since she didn't let him get away with anything. It's just a hop over to Gen X as a book from there.

  • Only Throg can save us now.

  • There was an Exiles story with this premise way back in the day that was a sort of tongue in cheek commentary on the trend.

  • I can understand the current team comps at launch in that they are clearly a nod to the "peak" of the Claremont (Gold=Uncanny Pre-Massacre, Blue=X-Factor) and an attempt to really shift back to that style of story telling. But I just can't grasp why OML is on Gold instead of Wolverine herself. Weapon X's premise is they are grabbing loners who won't be missed...OML doesn't even fit that premise given his re-orientation to being on a team the past few years despite that being counter to his premise (grumpy old logan who is done being a superhero).

  • For X-Men Blue: Am I the only one that is a bit worried about what appears to be James Hudson Jr. (Ultimate Universe Wolverine's son) showing up when Laura doesn't appear to be in any team books right now? Between this and what looks like Old Man Logan just picking up where 616 Original Logan left off, I'm a bit antsy.

  • I'm really hoping Old Man Logan gets yanked over to the Weapon X title and stays there.

  • ANX: Hopeless has made Idie & Evan's friendship one of my favorites in the X-books. I really want to see more stories about them in the new line, maybe as part of Generation X. Hank McCoy, (Techno?)Mage Beast is such a fun direction for the character. I can't wait to see this get explored further.

    I am also very happy with this conclusion to their status as being time displaced, because it fills some significant plot holes. Plus, this means the inevitable dark future timeline for the reality they were pulled from may show up at some point. It isn't an X-Men story if there isn't at least one super awful future to contend with.

    Can we make "Impromptu X-Men Dance Party" a cosplay meme at cons? Or maybe just the next J&MXtX Meetup Theme? I'd fly out to the Pacific Northwest for that.

    X-Men Prime The setups have my interest, but as laissezfarrell stated, Weapon X seemed weak. I'm honestly a little sad at the hint of Deathstrike shifting to anti-hero. I kind of hoped we'd get a Sisterhood lead by Madelyne and NOT drawn by Greg Land at some point. Oh well.

    The "no more romances with Peters" from Kitty makes me ever so hopeful we may, finally, see her get together with Rachel. Also, Quinten Quire on the splash page made me so happy! I know he's showing up in Gen X, but it's just nice to see him again. I wonder if we'll explore what pulled him back from the Hellfire Club. Or even better, maybe he's still part of their Inner Circle?

    Also agree on the :/ re: love triangle. I'm all for soapy sudsy soap opera, but not one that just retreads old ground again. I also really hope that Jean takes the boys to task fully for the "but...you're Jean" BS at some point. I think I'd even like to see Cyclops and Jean just be OK with a good friendship vs. "...we can't be together because of what that future turned out as the last time!"

    Black Widow. Why does this have to be over!? It was the Action Movie/Netflix series Natasha deserves.

  • I had the middle of the night epiphany that we ARE kind of getting my ideal situation with the new Generation X title, thought we aren't yet guaranteed this will be a school book. Here's hoping.

  • So, still have a few more books to read, but EX-Men is my only Marvel offering this week and I wanted to talk about it:

    I frickin' cheered when we got the baseball scene at the end, because it felt like an acknowledgement that we were getting back to a more familiar X-Men. And at the same time, I was frustrated, because I so very wanted to see this from the team sooner than 20 issues in. I'm not terribly happy with Martha/No-Girl giving her body up again, for fear of her losing agency as a character once more...but I'll wait and see. This could just be a setup for a larger shift in her paradigm, as the dialogue implied Martha feels like herself most when she is a disembodied brain. Or maybe that there's nothing to "fix" via prosthesis at all at this point and doing so is disingenuous to who she has become. I'll mull over it some more.

    Overall, I find it strange the only thing I otherwise cherish from this 20 issue run is how some of the "left behind" student characters from the Morrison New X-Men era have finally made the leap to more young adult, field ready X-Men. Now if Anole can just get a more significant character arc....

  • This is something I think New Mutants/Generation X did really well. I like the idea of a young mutant team with 1-3 "adults" as the primary teaching staff who aren't active on actual field teams. I think we're more than likely to continue to see a teaching staff who IS a field team given the big name characters sell books. I think the approach Wolverine & The X-Men took to this concept struck a great balance.

    I'd love to see a school run by Kitty's Gold Team with her as Headmistress (and, dare I say, Emma as headmistress of a rival school!).

    ...also, now I want Quentin Quire to be forced into teaching by Rachel.

  • Nooooo

  • Also, you know what this team needs? Joanna Cargill/Frenzy.

  • I considered this, but the possible replacements are just too much narrative baggage. Daken would eat up a lot of screen time to explain and challenge the narrative of Laura as Logan's child despite being a clone. Most of the Weapon Plus program subjects are hard to distill into something as simple as X-24/Other Logan Clone. A simplified, story light take on Omega Red might have worked, but the connection to Logan just isn't very strong.

    But in the end, having a visible "this is what you could be and where laura could end up" trying to kill you and people around you has the best symbolism. It also adds a lot of weight that Laura kills him with the adamantium bullet; her child/parent bond to Logan ends that possibility. It works in an elegant, exposition/story light sort of way. We understand very quickly and what X-24 is and how he works.

  • This is part of why I struggle to get on board with Old Man Logan: It feels like business as usual with a name change, which to me undercuts the idea that "our Logan" is dead and that Laura Kinney is Wolverine now, full stop.

    It would be different if we just had an Old Man Logan series with occasional cameos in other places while Wolverine ran around in our core team books (a la Thor & Odinson).

  • While I think I may have perused an issue of X-Men Classic where Wolverine is fighting off a brood infection as a very young tot, THIS is the first X-Men story I remember buying, reading, and latching onto X-Men comics themselves. I'd watched the '92 cartoon at that point and loved it, but this is where I attached that enjoyment to the original source itself.

  • While it wasn't my very first, it was my first cohesive X-Men story line nabbed from the long boxes of Half-Price Books and I was obsessed. Young me thought that X-Cutioner's song was the most awesome thing ever and all comics should do AWESOME crossovers like this.

    Young me had questionable judgement.

  • So, still working through all of my stuff, but IvX stuck out in that it seems to be setting up Emma for a hard fall back into villainy. Thoughts?

  • I had a similar experience. I like the series overall, but I wasn't enjoying it in a serial format and at times had to go back and reference a previous month's issue to regain some context. I've since delegated it to "waiting for the trades"

  • Am I the only one trying to nail down the time period it is supposed to take place in? At some points it feels very 1960s/70s (maybe even early 80s), and then we get things like that electronic pad device his interrogator was using....only to go right back to someone using a Tommy Gun.

    This could be intentional, I imagine, to show how disjointed his reality is. But even then, it would be great to get a vague idea of where in the grand timeline of X-Men this may be intended to occur.

  • Am I the only one who also doesn't really understand why they didn't attempt to just recapture the cloud into some sort of containment and go back to the way things were (i.e. When an Inhuman comes of age, they go into a mist chamber)? I don't read any of the Inhuman titles, so forgive me if this has already been addressed.

    Re: Killing Young Cyclops. They can't and won't. The potential ripples of Cyclops never growing up are huge and unpredictable. I don't see this even being really discussed unless Medusa & Co. get desperate. As removed as they are from the X-Men normally, this could still dramatically alter their timeline.

    I think the mutants are absolutely right at this point in the Terrigen Crisis. The Inhumans could, honestly, have devised a scrubber system that would trap the mist (close to what Forge has made to destroy it) and go back to a system by which Inhuman children enter the chamber when they reach puberty. Yes, it puts them back to being a very small population. But no one dies over it. I can understand why they desperately want this renaissance/rebirth for their species, I do. But that they just shrug and say "oh well" re: Mutants is pretty cold.