Writer Brian Michael Bendis
Artist Mahmud Asrar
Colorist Rain Beredo
Letterer VC’s Cory Petit
This issue will go down in history for a particular moment but we will get to that.
Utopia Island. Former Home of the X-Men, San Francisco Bay. A group of salvagers have arrived on the island. They suspect that the X-Men left behind a slew of valuables when they left the island nation. They suspect that the Avengers nor SHIELD has had the time to go back and pick up those islands. Which is odd, as SHIELD clearly has enough soldiers employed that can go to locations like Utopia and start grabbing important pieces of equipment.
There is a noise from a cave and someone or some group, knock out all of the
The New Xavier School. Location Secret. Today. The All New X-Men are finally back to their school, after a little visit to the Ultimate Universe and then their adventures in outer space during Black Vortex. They all have been missing their world, Scott has been gone longer than them, though.
Magik arrives, with some brown lunch bags.
Magik brought some burgers, which Scott has disparately been missing Earth food.
Hank and Magik get the dialogue exchange of the year.
Hank : And they don’t freak out when you magically appear in line at a fast food establishment dressed like that?
Magik : I usually get everything for free magically appearing dressed like this.
So great and it answers a very long never before asked question. How does Magik get so much stuff, so easily and so fast? Dressed that way, dudes are constantly willing to do anything for her. Rightfully so. Magik is so great and she really needs an ongoing series, I could make one last for fifty issues, easily.
Magik informs the team, now that Shadowcat (getting her first of two references, in this issue) is staying in space – Magik will be their instructor.
Scott calls Illyana “ma’am” and Magik, in turn, calls him “Baby Tyke-lops” which is a name that should really stick. Bendis has a great handle on Magik.
Jean picks up on the fact that something is going wrong inside the school, because she’s a nosy bitch.
Magik is going inside to figure it out, she tells the team to stay outside. So this issue takes place during Uncanny X-Men Volume Three 32, so Black Vortex takes place between 31 and 32. So Last Will and Testament of Xavier, Black Vortex, Issue 32, next is this issue and then Uncanny X-Men, so Kitty Pryde must come back to Earth in the next hour to make issue 33 set up.
Bobby, like a jerk, salutes Magik’s unbelievable hotness. But he isn’t being, like a real jerk about it. More like a 14 year old boy who is standing in front of an unbelievable hot lady. Jean, for no good reason, decides to pull Bobby aside. Bobby stands behind his comment, Magik is hot and he feels the need to address it. Jean knows Illyana is hot and there is no doubt that Illyana knows it too and makes it work for her.
Then the page that set the world on fire, one April 21, 2015 day. Jean tells Bobby that he is gay. Not him, under his own control, comes out to a dear friend. No, Jean, goes into his head, and decides to dictate what Bobby is. Jean, the worst person around.
Jean mind rapes the information from Bobby. Mind you, she and Bobby have never been close. They are not complete strangers but they are not close at all. Jean may be a tad closer to Warren. She’s always been close to Hank and Scott. I do like how All New Bobby and Scott were getting close. If someone was going to tell this story, I would have had Bobby come out to Scott. Like a scene where Bobby is updating Scott on everything that they did, and then end it with how he is preparing to come out as a homosexual. Bendis choose to go this route, as Jean is the star of this title and she needs to get all the big moments.
Bobby puts up an ice wall. We cut to the other members of the team, and they are pretty uninterested. Back to Bobby and Jean. Bobby points out that his older proper self is not gay.
Bobby isn’t sure why people like her so much, and I don’t get it ever.
Bobby isn’t sure how his older self cannot be gay, as well. Some of the forty pages of Uncanny X-Men 600, will be dedicated to the two Icemen talking about this.
Jean points out that Iceman never had any lasting relationships. Bobby points out his relationship to Kitty Pryde, BobKat. This reminds me of the issue of All New where Bobby saw his older self and Professor K making out, and he was disgusted by it. There also was the issue where Scott and he went on a double date and he was displeased with the lady he was stuck with. Then there was the issue where Bobby felt like a Disney princess. Which I like how Bendis has been dropping hints about this.
We get to the main panels that turn me off from this idea. Bobby tries to say that he could be bisexual. Jean pretty much, both, insults all bisexuals everywhere – with the comment that most people are bisexual. Then she identifies Bobby as being more . . . full gay. As if, full gay, was a term. But if Bobby wants to self identify as bisexual, let the boy self identify as bisexual. I mean, really, did Jean spend all of her time, since coming to the present, studying up on modern day sexuality, instead of looking into the ethics of being a telepath? That sounds about right.
We get to the page that makes this whole nonsense okay. Bobby appreciates that he finally got to voice some of the thoughts that are in his head.
Jean promises to keep his secret, but you know, she could have done that and never talk to Bobby about any of this.
What redeems this, is that Bobby calls Jean by my new favorite name for her – nosy bitch. I usually don’t like to refer to women as bitches but that’s pretty much what Jean is now, so I’m going with it.
Bobby tries to make the situation light and asks if Jean suspects that Warren could be gay. Jean shuts that idea down. Then they laugh about how Tyke-lops is a great nickname.
SHIELD Hellicarrier. Floating World Headquarters of the UN Peacekeeping Task Force. Present Location : 1,000 Feet Over London, England. Some SHIELD soldiers (are all of them called, agents?) tell Commander Maria Hill that there has been a situation. She instantly wishes that it isn’t mutant related and when they tell her it is, she starts slamming her head on the desk.
We get to the actual good part of the issue, Warren flies in and swoops X23 into his arms. They have a very nice chat and get some things said. He explains why he accepted the cosmic power upgrade. Once he came to the present, he learn how horrible his future was. He knew, the first chance he got, if he could make a permanent change, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take the opportunity. Now that he has this new sense of confidence, he can tell X23 that he loves her. They kiss, which is probably better than how he thought this conversation was going to go.
Utopia Island. Former home of the X-Men. San Francisco Bay. A SHIELD jet begins to land, when like their Hellicarrier, it crashes down onto the surface.
We finally meet The Utopians! They are not the Ultimate X-Men in the Proper Marvel Universe.
They are – The Morlock’s Masque / Elixir / Meltdown / Random / Madison Jeffries / Karma
Pretty decent line up there, I like how they have a color scheme. How did they get Masque from the New York City tunnels to across the nation? I also like how Meltdown is the leader of the group. I guess Elixir survived being nearly killed in Logan Legacy. Madison Jeffries, I suppose, never left the island. Random, maybe they are paying him to be there? Random hasn’t been seen in three years, since his short stint in Generation Hope, issues 15, 16 and 17. Surprisingly,
http://comicbookdb.com/character_chron.php?ID=4926
Random has been in at least one comic, every year from 2005 to today. He took 2004 off, had one appearance in 2003, took off 2002 – pretty decent.
Karma, was just not doing much after Astonishing ended.
. . .
As this is obviously months later, I wanted to cite some websites so that people can remember how much conversation was sparked with this issue.
Here are the two threads I was most active on :
Brian Cronin’s “Thoughts on All New X-Men 40 and Whether Flawed Characters Are a Sign of Flawed Writing
Uncanny X-Cast’s Facebook Group’s Issue Discussion
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4045322485/permalink/10153236850637486/
I post some links in there that made me think I should add them to this post.
Bryan Singer’s Reaction to All New Iceman’s coming out
Brian Michael Bendis’ “In Portland, no one cares about this type of stuff”
I’m sure there were hundreds of website reviews about the news item, itself, but these were the ones I stuck with or referenced.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 