I intentionally did not buy Uncanny Avengers. I’m giving AvX: Consequences a pass because it began the week right after AvX 12, is only 5 issues, and is weekly. But I have no desire whatsoever to “support” Marvel Now for a number of reasons, PRIMARILY that I am so incredibly sick and tired of renumbering, tons of variant covers, and the $3.99 price point.
Some of the premises for Marvel Now titles interest me–I’m so totally torn over whether or not to try A+X as a preview showing what looks like the Maestro Hulk and Days of Future Past Logan caught my attention, and having just read Avengers: X-Sanction I’m interested in the Cap/Cable thing, see where they stand. Even though that may put me at risk of interest in Cable and X-Force.
But the biggest problem-title for me is the All-New X-Men. I hate all the retconning of the past decade, and loose/basic time-travel rules tell us all 5 X-Men will eventually return, in order to age into the present without changing history, and they’ll have no memory of stuff after.
But in general, time-travel stories, alternate timelines, etc. often interest me; my favorite for X-Men is certainly the original (mid-1990s) Age of Apocalypse (I care very little for anything done with AoA from 2005-present). So a time-travel X-Men story…ok.
Often we see time-travel stories from the point of view of having the focal character(s) and traveling “with” them into a “possible future.” You have the characters at current status quo, and the future is some possibility, taking outlandish concepts and seeing what events might twist the current characters into vastly different people by the time the future rolls around.
Here with this title, it’s kinda the other way around–we have our “present” that IS “the future” to these characters–we’ve seen the events as they’ve unfolded all these years that brought the characters from their teenage-original-X-Men-years to present. We’ve seen Fatal Attractions, The Shattering, The Twelve, Dream’s End, the Morrison run, Whedon‘s Astonishing X-Men run, House of M, Messiah Complex, Second Coming, AvX, and everything in-between.
Granted, this isn’t an entirely new concept….but to me it’s an intriguing “twist” of sorts. The closest comparison I can think of offhand would be Green Lantern: Emerald Knights when Kyle accidentally brought a young Hal Jordan to the then-present DCU and Hal got to learn of his own future, the Parallax corruption and so on.
I haven’t cared for all of Bendis‘ work…and certainly been “poisoned” a bit on his stuff due to marketing/hype. I avoided New Avengers on principle–Variant covers, as well as renumbering Avengers to #500 just to end at #503 and “relaunch” with New Avengers #1; having variant covers for EVERY ISSUE for the first 6-8 issues, I opted out. 
Then with the Heroic Age relaunching of Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, etc. I was all set to dive in…but was unwilling to actually do so at $3.99/issue.
I loved early Ultimate Spider-Man…quick though the issues are to read, the first 60-70 some issues are probably my favorite Spider-Man comics, period. So I already “know” contemporary Marvel and X-Men, and given his run on Ultimate Spider-Man, trust Bendis to write the young X-Men enjoyably.
Apparently the first 6 issues will be bi-weekly, so…yeah, 6 $4 issues means $24 in only 3 months…but I’m assuming that’s a full 6-issue arc, 
presumably withOUT having to wait a whole 6 months. So I can give the title at least a couple issues, maybe the whole first arc, to win me over long-term…and re-evaluate on a case-by-case basis.
So maybe in that regard, Marvel Now will be a success. And I guess I shouldn’t wish failure on it. I’m just not the primary target audience. But if I can find something to enjoy–great, that’s one more thing TO enjoy. And if I don’t enjoy it, or lose interest…I’ll still be able to fall back on the Valiant titles and IDW‘s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books.
Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: All New X-Men, bendis, MARVEL, Marvel Comics, Marvel Now, x-men | Leave a comment »
Comic Reviews by Walt 