Writer Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler Stuart Immonen
Inker Wade Von Grawbadger
Colorists Marte Gracia and Jason Keith
Letterer VC’s Cory Petit
That cover! Something about a winged character on a motorcycle, he must be going a great distance.
Issue opens right where the last one left, with X23 about to gut Baby Xavier. Which is the name the X-Men give him and I find it to be very fitting.
Jean quickly gives X23 a sit rep and Laura knows exactly what to do!
Not sure what Jason Keith contributed to the coloring duties this issue but I love it every single time Gracia can get away with it as he keeps the issue pretty much bathed in red light.
X23 stabs Baby Xavier so much that his hold on the Brotherhood of Evil Future X-Men weakens.
Jean starts fight Xavier as X23 fights Raze. Raze makes a joke regarding how they are related. So he’s the son of Wolverine and she’s his clone so what is a son to his father’s clone? Comics!
Jean gets distracted by the concept of how Raze is related to Laura and Baby Xavier is able to recoup.
Kitty shows up and leads the attack. One imagines that Kitty and the gang will be out for blood as they spent the entire last two issues being attacked mentally by Irma.
Baby Xavier loses control over his Brotherhood of Evil Future X-Men so he turns his attention to the proper X-Men and tells them to fight. I wish we got more of the Kitty v Magik fight as that sounds like an awesome match up. With their powers, who knows who would win.
So they now take their frustrations out on each other.
Other match ups are Hank v Tempus / Cyclops v Triage (more of a one sided fight, one would think) / Irma v Bobby / Angel v who is that person? / Jean v Emma
Xavier turns to his Brotherhood and wants them to attack as well, and for his thanks, Deadpool shoots him.
I imagine the shock of being shot at, weakens his hold on the proper X-Men.
Jean and the Cuckoos take him into the Cuckoos’ hive mind. I like how the sisters are blue and Jean is pink.
Xavier gets one last good distraction and disappears. Magik heads out to locate him.
X23 finally gets help with Raze via an optic blast from Cyclops and then Bobby freezes Raze to a wall.
Molly Haynes can’t believe she was fighting the X-Men, she made an oath to never do that. Not sure if I’m that interested in that story ever being told but it probably explains why she left the Runaways and joined the X-Men years ago.
Emma turns to Lady Xorn to question her and finds out that it has been an empty vessel this entire time. This confuses Jean as last time, it was an older her in the outfit. She is still traumatized by that knowledge.
Emma is the one who first calls him, Baby Xavier. She’s so cutting sometimes. That not being the best example of that.
Magik returns, stating that Xavier passed out in the snow. She has her horns back on her head, I wonder what that is about as we haven’t seen any aspect of her Darkchilde persona in a while.
There is a great moment where Kitty asks if Xavier is dead and Bobby wonders if they should come back later and check on him again. Cyclops tells them that today’s lesson is to be better than your enemies. He is still haunted by the death of his mentor, Professor Xavier. Though he was being manipulated by the Phoenix Force, so it really isn’t much different than say all the times Wolverine has been mind controlled and doesn’t care at all about those he hurt or killed during that time. But Cyclops is a better character than Wolverine, so that makes sense that he would be haunted by his actions. No matter the excuse.
Future Beast has a new time cube and is getting everyone back to the future. He tells young Hank that people are going to blame him for nearly everything that goes wrong and for the most part, they would be right but that Hank should try to start being a better person and prevent some of the nonsense that is credited to him.
Cut to the Raft. Apparently the X-Men dropped off Xavier and Raze there to become prisoners of SHIELD – so expect these two to break out and escape pretty soon. Let’s start a clock on it!
I do like Maria Hill being a smart character. If the X-Men say don’t take off the power dampeners, please do not take off the power dampeners! Unforunately, Xavier is given a piece of paper so he can write a note.
Cut to the future where Raze is giving his time-travel-is-the-answer speech and how they will write their future selves letters so that they can try again. Which I’m still confused by, so once this group goes back in time (but not before this adventure) does that mean there are three Xavier Juniors and three Razes running around? One would think so or are they overwritten once the future ones go back to the present? I’m sure that isn’t how time travel works.
Issue ends with Warren offering to take Laura out on a motorcycle adventure, which she agrees too.
Cyclops wonders if that is his motorcycle that is speeding off in the distance. These X-Men, they can’t keep their motorcycles at all!
Pretty good issue, glad we have passed this sequel to Battle of the Atom and now we can go onto bigger and better adventures.
Next issue’s cover has X23 kissing Angel. Will it happen within the comic, or will it not like with the cover with her kissing Cyclops? Also, she really isn’t that type of character, just kissing random guys. She isn’t Jean Grey.
Hopefully Kitty can finally do more than suffer major migraines and lead the All New X-Men cast again. Also, that Magik should totally join this team, officially, as well!
If you follow me on Tumblr, I used mostly other people’s images for this post (pretty obvious as they are cropped and everything) and my rule with Tumblr is that I will follow people who I borrow their images so thanks to all of those people who are taking the time to make all of these images!
Our Tumblr page is :
I’m still new to it so I’m not sure if Tumblr works like Twitter and you can see who I follow but I follow people who usually post images from comics. Very handy site, in that regard!
Shadow and Flame with Magik 