Shadow and Flame with Magik

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Frank Cho, Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger

Colors by Marte Gracia

Part One of Ten

Nice open with Magik being in the future right away.  She is breaking a rule by doing so, but the captions imply that Cyclops is already reading the note from her, so this three page section takes place later in the story.

Back at the school, Jean is trying to tell Bobby to not start a food fight.  Kitty states that they have had those before.  Food fights always seem to be products of television, movies abd cartoons, no one actually has those.  They are a waste of food and I can’t even imagine cleaning up all of it.

I couldn’t tell if Kitty’s Cerebro alert is a Lockheed head, or is it really him in the monitor room reaching out?  He definitely is not in the room when they get there.

As far as I can tell, Lockheed has not met the Original Five at this point.

Shout out to Phoenix, Arizona, if only it had been Yuma.

Animax is an interesting new character.  Looks like, what she draws becomes real.  With all of those dragons, Lockheed would have fit right in.

Cho has been drawing these opening pages.  I like the way he worked in Liberty Meadows, his independent book.  Nice job!

Bobby wanting to hurry the fight up, as he is not doing well in the Arizona heat, is a nice touch.  That is not a problem present day Iceman has.  Bobby wants to date the villain, probably overreacting to his present self dating Kitty.

Is it just me, or is it odd that Sentinels are always sneaking up on people?  Are their boot thrusters on stealth mode?  They must be so loud, but after all these years, no one ever hears them coming until they are right on top of them.

Reference to All New X-Men 10, where Kitty is training them to fight Sentinels, and the team does not listen to her.  I like how they still don’t do that great of a job.  They are still to new at this.  Barely have ten adventures under their belts.

Teen Scott takes a beating during this fight.

Cho does a spectacular job with the introduction of the Uncanny X-Men.  Though I do notice that the one Cuckoo has her hair back to blonde, but that is more of an issue with the editor, or simply this story takes place after the current Uncanny arc.  That’s probably it, or Cho drew this months ago and afterwards, Bendis felt like changing her.

I love the interaction between Kitty and Cyclops.  Very cute from her and you can tell he is being playful as well.  He helps her up as he is a true gentleman.

Awesome double page spread!

I still forget Magneto us in all white

Young Scott takes a would be fatal blast from a Sentinel, current Cyclops disappears.  Luckily, Triage is there abd brought both of them back to life.

How different are the two uniforms of Cyclops?  So drastic, but I can’t take my eyes off of the lack of a proper visor on current Cyclops.

Once the All New X-Men team, minus Angel, get back to the Jean Grey School, Immonen takes the art chores.  That is a smart move, as Part Two takes place in All New X-Men, so for the trade, the art will just blend in.  Good job!

Wolverine, Storm, Iceman, Beast and Kitty all want to send the Original Five back to the past, immediately.

Then the future X-Men come through the time cube.

So in the room we have

From the Past

Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Jean

From the Present

Iceman, Kitty, Storm and Wolverine

From the Future

Beast, Bruiser, Deapool, Iceman, Kate Pryde, Lady Xorn and Xavier

A couple of pin ups are in the back

David Lopez does the Original Five

Frazer Irving does Uncanny X-Men, Magik is in this one

Simone Bianchi and Frank Martin does Wolverine and the X-Men, which has Kitty and I am not usually a fan of Bianchi (his art is usually too dark for my tastes) but there is a clear light source and can make out everything.

Phil Noto does X-Men, Kitty looks great in this one too.  There is a softness that I like

Stefano Caselli and Andres Mossa does the Future X-Men, minus Kate Pryde, so there’s that.

These pin ups are most likely be used for the second printing variants for this saga.  I will be interested in three of the five.