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Jan 6

All-New X-Men vol 1: Here Comes Yesterday

Posted on Sunday, January 6, 2013 by Paul in x-axis

It’s been a weirdly quiet couple of weeks for the X-books.  Pretty much the whole industry took last week off, but even with the X-books’ overabundance of output, this week is also quiet, with only All-New X-Men #5 coming out.  As it happens, that’s also where the first collection is due to end (it ships in February), so let’s take this as our cue to look back at the first arc.

All-New X-Men is the product of one of Marvel’s now-familiar marketing strategies: cancel a book, launch what appears to be a replacement, and then relaunch the actual book a couple of months later.  The idea, presumably, is that this creates two books that inherit the sales of the original title.  In reality, All-New X-Men is taking the place on the schedule of the unwanted, unloved, unadjectived X-Men, which stumbled on for a couple of fill-in issues for no apparent purpose other than to distract from that fact.  And it ought to work; they’ve taken a book that even the most avid completist would regard as supernumerary, and replaced it with a book that will be seen as a flagship setting the direction that Brian Bendis will take as the X-Men’s new lead writer.

The general verdict so far seems to be that the book has exceeded expectations, and it’s certainly miles better than Bendis’ rambling and unfocussed Avengers run.  Naturally it helps that this book has the benefit of Stuart Immonen on art; not only is his work beautiful, but it also holds its own against Bendis’ very distinctive authorial voice and gives the book a rather greater sense of connection to Marvel’s past than you often find in his books.  Immonen is hardly an artist who works in any sort of house style, but there’s something reassuringly traditional and primary-colour-ready about his work that balances Bendis out.

And you really do need that balance if you’re going to do a series where the high concept is that the original X-Men from 1963 come to the present.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this storyline is likely inspired primarily by the search for something to celebrate the X-Men’s fiftieth anniversary this year, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea.  It does mean, though, that the book has to be capable of accommodating something vaguely evocative of Marvel tradition.  The balancing act here is to find a way of accommodating the original X-Men into the present day set-up that preserves the gimmick but makes them into characters rather than a metafictional gag.  And since they can’t be written in the style of the original 1960s stories – that would just be jarringly weird in any modern writer’s style – you’ve got to evoke some sense of tradition and history about them instead.  Visually, the book manages that.

As for the writing, Bendis has a dubious track record on books with large casts, but this time round his pacing and focus seem much improved.  That said, this first arc is really five issues of set-up.  What Bendis really wants to do in this arc is to establish the premise of this book (the original X-Men come to the present day) and to establish the premise of sister title Uncanny X-Men (Cyclops is running an underground version of the X-Men with revolutionary aspirations).  Ideally, in an ongoing title, you’d have an actual story which doubles up to establish those plot points for the wider series.  In practice, though, these five issues aren’t really a story in their own right, and don’t seek to do anything more than nod in the direction of being one.

There are two plot threads that are meant to give this arc its shape: first, the Beast thinks he’s dying but a cure is found; and second, the original X-Men are brought to the present and decide to stay.  The first, while it dominates issue #5, is really just handwaved away when his condition simply turns out to be curable after all.  That’s pretty darned weak.  The plotline is here to provide an excuse for a redesign of the Beast, which I guess has the advantage of moving away from a design which has become overly familiar, and to ostensibly motivate him to serve the purposes of the plot by going back in time to fetch the original team.  (In fact, a better explanation is offered by characters who suggest that the real reason Hank didn’t do this earlier is simply that his true motivation is to take emotional revenge on Scott for killing the Professor.)  Fundamentally, though, Hank’s illness is not much of a story in its own right, distinct from the functions it serves in other plots.

As for the original X-Men, their situation is a little more interesting.  As a set-up, it’s a clever inversion of a standard superhero trope, where the characters travel into their future but go home afterwards vowing to try and make sure this world never comes about.  We’re doing that story from the perspective of the “dark future” being visited, and we’ve got the characters sticking around for a while to try and make a difference and reassure themselves that the future is good enough to make it worth their while going back.  And there are interesting character points here, most obviously with Scott having to interact with people who now view him as a potential future maniac, Jean being aware of how everything turns out for both of them, and the potential effect of that on their relationship.  (Putting Kitty in the position of being their liaison is also a nice inversion of her original teen-sidekick role.)

Admittedly, it’s also unfortunate that Bendis has pretty much botched establishing what that relationship currently is – issue #1 actually does show Scott writing a letter to Jean to declare his feelings, which suggests that Bendis realised that they weren’t together at this point.  But later on in the arc Jean mentions dating Scott as if she’s perfectly well aware of how this turns out.  The fact that Scott and Jean learn that they ended up together – and what happened at the end – ought to be a major discovery for both of them, and it’s worryingly glossed over here.  Equally, I don’t really buy Wolverine’s “hey, why don’t we just kill Scott now and alter history” argument.  I just don’t believe that Wolverine hates Cyclops quite that much.  Though if you’re going to go in that direction, at least give Wolverine a clearer reason not to do it. For example, if he kills Cyclops because of something that, as a result of his death, Cyclops will never have done, that’s a massive paradox and god only knows what would happen to history.  In theory there might be something in the idea of Wolverine having to grudgingly bail out young Scott because he has no idea what sort of damage could be caused to the timeline if he dies.

(Continuity purists will argue that the arc ignores the established rules of Marvel time travel, but since those “established rules” have been contradicted hundreds of times by now, I don’t really care.  In fact, time travel in the X-Men has pretty much always ignored those rules ever since it was introduced in the 1980s, and stories have been written on the assumption that history can be altered.  If you want to condemn every story that contradicts a few lines of dialogue from a Fantastic Four storyline that were subsequently canonised by Mark Gruenwald, you’re going to have similar problems with Days of Futures Past, the original conception of the Age of Apocalypse, and the hammering of the cosmic reset button at the end of the Ulan Gath story.  Yes, you can shoehorn all of these into the supposed rules if you adopt a contrived reading that ignores the spirit of the stories, but that’s letting the tail wag the dog.)

Still, there’s potential here – and there’s also plenty of potential for entertaining paradoxes as everyone ponders just what actually happens if one of the original X-Men manages to get themselves killed.  But to get to that point in these five issues, Bendis just needs something or other to occur that prompts them to decide to stay.  So the X-Men come to the present, act appropriately shocked, go off to confront Scott’s current team, have a confrontation, and decide to go home, and ultimately decide to stay.  Nothing really happens when the two teams meet that might justify this decision, but the structure of the story kind of passes it off as an incident that has consequences; in practice, it’s just padding out the opening issues and providing a bit of confrontation.  The team’s real motivation to stay comes in a scene in this issue where Jean reads Hank’s mind and discovers what happened to the team – a double page spread which does at least show that somebody’s put some thought into the whole of Jean’s career and tried to come up with a series of images that really does hit all the key points, down to the 1990s mini Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, the Twelve storyline, and the death of Madelyne Pryor.  Immonen pulls it off beautifully.

You’ll note that I haven’t said much about the set-up for Cyclops’ current team, which takes up about half the arc but isn’t really a storyline at all, merely a string of introductions of new characters and the establishment of a new status quo.  Since they serve as the antagonists here, they don’t really need their story to get under way, and in any event it’s mostly going to be in Uncanny X-Men from the looks of it.  There promising ideas being established, making Scott’s team appear both ramshackle and vaguely dangerous in a way they haven’t been before.  The plot thread about the team having lost control of their powers as a result of being exposed to the Phoenix Force serves a purpose in making them vulnerable and giving them something to hide, but it’s also hideously contrived, especially in the case of Magneto.  (Yes, it could be that something else is responsible, but Colossus is having the same problems over in Cable & X-Force, so I wouldn’t count on it.)  It also doesn’t really explain why the team all seemed to have powers working just fine in issue #1; Scott’s optic beams are drawn normally, in particular.  Perhaps there’s an explanation coming but you have to wonder whether it’s just a massive cock-up.

Less promising are the new characters intended to be the trainees of Scott’s new team, none of whom has yet developed beyond the generic.  They collectively provide an interesting perspective as outsiders who don’t realise that this isn’t what the X-Men are supposed to be like, but who are starting to realise that they’ve thrown in their lot with a group who are a lot more dysfunctional than they’d expected.  But as individuals, they’ve yet to impress.  And while there are story possibilities in breaking up Scott and Emma as a couple while forcing them to work together, Bendis has a complete tin ear when it comes to Emma’s voice.  Even allowing for his own dialogue style, he’s not even getting the accent right.

So if you’re looking for five issues that actually tell a satisfying story, well, All-New X-Men vol 1 isn’t that book.  But if you’re willing to take the longer view and treat this as set-up – something the series has pretty much got away with thanks in large part to its accelerated publishing schedule – then there’s a lot more to like about it.  And boy, is it pretty.

Bring on the comments

  1. kelvingreen says:

    rambling and unfocussed

    You’re being kind there.

  2. Tdubs says:

    All I could think about in issue 5 was great another version of Beast to be badly drawn by other artists and ignored by editors of other books. Plus does it resemble the mutant x version to others?

  3. Chaos McKenzie says:

    Bendis’ usual dialogue tics, didn’t bug me as much in this, though I imagine it will get harder to ignore the longer he’s with them. In particular Magik, at first I found her dialogue off as I was soooo comfortable with Gillen’s version of few, deeply cutting words – but Bendis’ dialogue style is actually very close to how Magik used to talk before her death.

    It’s weird though, from a story stand point when one of the new mutants in the first issue is introduced with having undefined “healing” powers, I assumed then that the first arc would end with Cyclops’ renegade team helping to cure the injured Beast. But trying to correct the damage Hank did originally when he turned himself blue was a nice twist I didn’t see coming as I kept waiting for the new guy or even Elixir to pop in and do the fixing.

  4. D. says:

    I’m surprised you don’t even mention the enormous continuity errors regarding Jean’s powers, and the lame attempts to cover them up.

    I’m more and more certain that we’re going to learn that these 5 are not the 616 X-Men. Too many continuity differences, and if they’re slotted to stay in the 616 here-now, then the jumblefuck of a paradox is easiest avoided by having them brought in from 615 (or whatever) continuity. They remind me of the characters from X-Men: Season One, more than those written by Lee/Kirby.

  5. Zoomy says:

    What was the explanation when the Legion of Super-Heroes did this exact same thing, donkey’s years ago? Something like “temporal duplicates”, so it really was the teenage versions, but you don’t have to worry about continuity? I’m sure it’ll be something satisfying like that…

  6. Jeremy says:

    Beast does look too much like Brute now, and probably even more like Nosferatu than whatever sort of ape/simian look they were going for here. As Tdubs said, every artist is going to have their own interpretation but it’s even worse now because the original seems to be a bit more generic.

    What really gets me is that all of this is because of Nick Lowe. He seems to literally be the only person who liked “Cat-beast” as everyone else at Marvel was in favor of returning to the original design, which is what should have happened. Instead he threw a hissy fit and they had to settle on something that’s different but is still just as bad.

    Just one of the many reasons to wonder how and why he ever got to the position he is in.

  7. David Aspmo says:

    “The fact that Scott and Jean learn that they ended up together – and what happened at the end – ought to be a major discovery for both of them, and it’s worryingly glossed over here.”

    I don’t think that’s fair. This revelation is clearly affecting them as shown by Jean’s angry reaction to Scott at the end of issue #5.

    And Wolverine’s threats toward Scott are, I think, clearly meant to just be posturing and as Beast says, “working out his issues”.

  8. Si says:

    He’s Panthro. Beast is Panthro. You know, Thundercats. All he needs is some S&M spikes.

    I don’t know though, is this something new, or an interpretation of his former appearance? I mean, the man difference between this and the old look is he’s misisng the Wolverine haircut*. Which, call me a cynic, but this just opens another can of worms. Can we expect another decade of artists interpreting wildly different appearances, with some drawing his old Wolverine hair, some giving him the Panthro look, others rebelling and making him more cat-like, and still others making him look like something else again?

    The other problem is that this firmly establishes Beast as being the character who always changes. Next time they need a stunt, or a hot new creative team wants to leave their mark, Beast will be mutated yet again, mark my words. And then someone else will revert him back to a former shape that they like best, and so-on, and so-on. Call me a cynic if you will.

    *yes I know Beast’s hairstyle came first

  9. kelvingreen says:

    He seems to literally be the only person who liked “Cat-beast”

    I liked the feline look and I was astonished — ho ho — that they didn’t find an excuse to revert it as soon as Morrison left.

  10. Si says:

    Actually what I’d do with Beast is make him a full-on shape shifter. He can turn from fully human to some enormous blue cat-bear thing, or stop at every stage in between. He just never discovered the mechanism so he stayed in one shape. His look varies so much because he was subconsciously moving between shapes, and nobody ever mentioned the difference because … um … they’re polite?

  11. Alex says:

    a fairly concise history of the SW6 Legionnaires.

    http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes_%28SW6%29

    Giffen’s original idea was the SW6 clones would be revealed to be the real team and the adult Legion would be the clones.

    (a la Ben Reilly)

  12. Jeremy: If you’re not actually making it up, I suspect you’re paraphrasing something someone said somewhere in a way far more seriously than was actually intended. I’ve been in the rooms when this debate went down, and Nick was far from his own.

    I only step in in case someone is going to read what you wrote and think it’s the truth.

    Si: I half-jokingly made a similar suggestion as a solution to the no-one-draws-cat-beast the same thing. He’s always mutating, so never shares the same look between arcs.

    But, as Paul says, Tail wagging dog.

  13. Dan says:

    I thought with the Age of Apocalypse, all the business with the M’Kraan Crystal was to ensure that it did fit the Marvel time travel rules. It was just another divergent timeline, but it briefly became the only surviving one when all the others were crystallised.

  14. George C. says:

    Regarding the Nick Lowe/Beast thing, Jeremy’s take might derive from this Axel Alonso quote

    “Nick Lowe absorbed a lot of body punches for his strident defense of “Cat Beast” at two editorial summits! [Laughs] Ultimately, Beast’s redesign made sense in the context of Brian’s story, so we did it.”

    which is from Friday’s column over at CBR: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=43008

    This was a great write-up of All New X-Men -it’s been a flawed run so far, but it has entertained. Ultimately, that’s the most important thing for me. I hope you can do more of these arc-long reflections in the New Year, Paul.

  15. Jeremy says:

    Thanks Kieron…my comment ended up being a bit harsher than I originally intended but I have been looking forward to the return of “Perez Beast” for awhile now and cross my fingers every time an opportunity to do so seems to present itself (the “Utopia” arc where the X-Men took on the Dark Avengers being a good example of that sort of opportunity).

    Nick has never been shy about expressing his fondness for “Cat Beast” in interviews and that fact along with the clip below led me to believe he’s been a major reason the character has not already changed back and a major reason why we’re getting a new version instead of the classic version. As you said though, there must be others at Marvel who are fans of “Cat Beast” but are just not as vocal about that opinion.

    The recent interview he did with Newsarama where they discuss the major changes in ANXM #5 and the video in link below were what got me thinking Nick was the only one defending “Cat-Beast”, however irrational that thinking may have been…
    http://www.digitalspy.com/comics/news/a442239/brian-michael-bendis-teases-all-new-x-men-death.html

  16. magnuskn says:

    “Kulan” Gath, please.

  17. magnuskn says:

    Oh, and Mr. Gillen, if you are still reading.. you are an evil man. I really liked Kid Loki and that was not the end that poor boy deserved.

    Still, you wrote a great story, but put a cruel, cruel ending to it. I hope the poor kid gets a chance to come back and wreak some heavy duty payback on his dastardly older self. And, I don’t know, get together with Leah. Somehow.

    I hate tragedies.

  18. ZZZ says:

    I’m not super thrilled with the new Beast design (though I’m remaining optimistic that it’ll grow on me – it’s just the lack of big hair that makes it seem weird) but I’m very pleased to see that Immonen drew him with distinctly apelike hands and feet. The thing that bothered me more than anything else about Cat-Beast was that, when he first appeared, Quitely drew him with big mitten-like cat paws, despite the fact that the Beast’s entire power set was supposed to be based around having oversized but hyperarticulate hands and feet. This was a guy who used to be able to type with his toes and now he looked like he’d be lucky to manage it with his fingers.

    Like everything about Cat-Beast, different artists drew him at different points along a continuum from old school Ape-Beast to full-on Quitely-style “Disney’s Beauty and the” Beast, but I could swear at least once he actually talked about being frustrated with the clumsiness of his current hands and it was clear that that was supposed to be the default.

    Of course, that’s exactly the kind of detail that gets overlooked when other artists have to interpret a character design (look at any non-X-Men comic where the X-Men guest starred from the 70s or early 80s – before they became Marvel’s top draw – and you’ll find at least one panel where Nightcrawler has five fingers per hand) but hey, I can hold out hope.

  19. Jack says:

    I would like this book a lot more if someone else than Bendis were writing it. He’s good at the whole down-to-earth, inspective character study, but he simply sucks at the more wondrous super heroic level, which is where I’d put the X-Men. Also, how the fuck could he get Emma’s (and adult Cyclop’s as well, I’d add) so wrong? I mean, she was the most distinctive female superhero, by FAR. And now she might as well be Jean Grey.

  20. ZZZ says:

    Considering that Emma’s entire persona is supposed to be an elaborate artifice created to manipulate how people view her – to the point that it’s been mentioned a few times that she always speaks with an upper-class British accent despite being American – having Emma drop her facade and act more rough-around-the-edges COULD be used to convey her reaching the end of her rope and being fed up with her situation. BUT:

    1) There’s no indication that’s what Bendis is actually doing; certainly someone should comment on it if she’s supposed to be acting out-of-character in comic, and it would be good judgement on the part of a new writer on a book to have a character act in-character at least a little before writing them intentionally out-of-character.

    2) By all accounts she’s been keeping up the facade 24/7 for years at this point. There shouldn’t really be a “real Emma” underneath the act, or rather, the act should have gradually become the “real Emma”; if you speak with an affected accent long enough – and stop speaking with your natural one altogether – the affected accent becomes your natural accent. And…

    3) Possibly at least partially because of point 2, Emma’s been in really rough spots before without dropping her facade, so to have her do it now would be kind of an artificial way to tell us that this is the most upset she’s ever been without giving us a good explanation why this particular straw broke the camel’s back.

    But aside from those three points, having Emma “break character” could be an interesting choice for a writer to explore. You know, if that were actually what Bendis was doing.

  21. Niall says:

    Yeah, there’s a lot to like about this arc, but it is pretty flawed. Again, I blame the editors rather than Bendis –
    at least for most of the problems.

    The characterisations of Cyclops and company are pretty off. There’s a moment in the current issue where a New mutant tells Scott that he knows what he did. I kind of wish that he’d share that knowledge. A world where Ben Grimm, Jan Grey , Norman Osborne and Namor get free passes but where Cyclops is hunted and hated makes little sense.

  22. Nick says:

    “A world where Ben Grimm, Jan Grey , Norman Osborne and Namor get free passes but where Cyclops is hunted and hated makes little sense.”

    Well Jean was never the Dark Phoenix, so she should get a pass.

    Osborn is obviously evil (both to readers and most residents of the 616 Marvel Universe) so I don’t really think anyone is giving him a pass.

    I also think there are several difference between the Thing’s possession by Angrir in Fear Itself and the Phoenix Five’s possession
    in AvX:

    1.) Angrir completely supplanted and controlled the Thing where as the Phoenix force seemed to empower the Phoenix Five; they still retained free will.

    2.) Both before (and after) his possession Ben Grimm was and is a good guy and felt enormous guilt over what he had done while possessed.

    The Phoenix Five (and particularly Cyclops)on the other hand, were already on a path towards a “mutants before all-others” worldview and have largey been portrayed as unapologetic since they were possessed.

  23. Nick says:

    Did anyone else find it odd that Bendis wrote Beast as an athieist in All-New X-Men #5? I remember him being portrayed as a non-denominational Christian in X-Men Unlimited #10 and Uncanny X-Men #524.

  24. kelvingreen says:

    Emma’s been in really rough spots before without dropping her facade

    Yes, you’d think being present at the annihilation of Genosha might lead to her dropping the accent if anything would.

  25. David Aspmo says:

    “having Emma drop her facade and act more rough-around-the-edges COULD be used to convey her reaching the end of her rope and being fed up with her situation.”

    That’s what Bendis was telling everyone on Twitter it was after the first issue featuring Emma came out. But, like you say, it doesn’t really come across in the actual story – maybe it’ll be explored more once Uncanny gets going.

  26. Si says:

    I’d like it if Emma’s accent changed into something new every time she got a big fright.

  27. Master Mahan says:

    It could be interesting if the idea is that Emma’s been shocked into dropping her fake accent, but that needs to be in the story itself. If the reader can only pick on a story element from reading your twitter, then you’ve failed as a storyteller. It also doesn’t help that Bendis has had a less than sterling record writing dialogue for the several years. His Avengers was basically limited to two voices: 1)Snarky, and 2) Snarky and also black. ANX has been better so far, but it’s still not a record to aspire confidence.

    I’m really not sold on the New Charles Xavier School, and not just because I really hope someone calls Scott out on the name (isn’t that like OJ Simpson starting the Nicole Brown Scholarship?). Marvel has never had a lot of success with the mutant school concept. Do they really need two of them?

  28. D. says:

    Hank went to confession in XMU v.1 #10, but admits that he hadn’t been in a long time. I don’t see anything in UXM 524 that suggests Hank is a Christian.

    I think it’s a reasonable characterization for Hank to be an atheist. Most Americans of his generation grew up in a church, but many have drifted away; some through apathy, others through conviction. Hank was drifting away in 1996 when XMU was published. Not surprised to see he’s drifted away out of conviction rather than apathy. He strikes me as the kind of guy that thinks about this stuff a lot.

  29. Alan says:

    A perfect summation of every nagging “huh?” I experienced reading the book. The premise offers a lot of potential but suffers from–in my opinion–too much Bendis.

  30. Zoomy says:

    Way back in Infinity Crusade, when the heroes with deep religious beliefs were snatched away by the Goddess, Beast wasn’t taken, but protested that he thought he should have been, since he believes in God. Like D says, you could easily see this as a natural progression in the way he thinks.

  31. odessasteps says:

    ” anipulate how people view her – to the point that it’s been mentioned a few times that she always speaks with an upper-class British accent despite being American.”

    So, emma is Madonna?

  32. LeoCrow says:

    “she always speaks with an upper-class British accent despite being American”
    Maybe she never did! Maybe she was just making others think she was using her telepathy and now that that’s been messed up, she can’t.
    Or maybe she got infected by bendisitis

  33. James Moar says:

    “it’s been mentioned a few times that she always speaks with an upper-class British accent despite being American”

    One possibility is that she’s got a Boston Brahmin accent, which is an upper-class US accent that can be perceived as fake British. She’s even from Boston….

    “Well Jean was never the Dark Phoenix, so she should get a pass.”

    The creators and readers have enough issues with the details, so what chance does the MU man-on-the-street have of keeping it straight?

  34. Niall says:

    “Osborn is obviously evil (both to readers and most residents of the 616 Marvel Universe) so I don’t really think anyone is giving him a pass.”

    Now, maybe. But he was put in charge of Shield and treated as a national hero as the Iron Patriot.

    “I also think there are several difference between the Thing’s possession by Angrir in Fear Itself and the Phoenix Five’s possession
    in AvX:

    1.) Angrir completely supplanted and controlled the Thing where as the Phoenix force seemed to empower the Phoenix Five; they still retained free will. ”

    My memory may be wrong, but that’s not how I remember it working. Didn’t the Chosen have to accept the hammer on some level? That’s how I seem to remember Cain Marko’s transformation. And besides, it was pretty clear that the Phoenix 5 didn’t so much have free will, as influence. The Phoenix was channelled through the 5, but they weren’t in control of it.

    “2.) Both before (and after) his possession Ben Grimm was and is a good guy and felt enormous guilt over what he had done while possessed.

    The Phoenix Five (and particularly Cyclops)on the other hand, were already on a path towards a “mutants before all-others” worldview and have largey been portrayed as unapologetic since they were possessed.”

    Well, by such logic, any of the patriotic heroes of the Marvel Universe (Captain America, US Agent, Pete Wisdom, Sabra, the Winterguard) are all on a dark path. Putting Mutants first when you’re the head of an organisation responsible for saving a species on the brink of extinction is far from evil.

  35. Jeremy: Someone should do a poll on where people stand on the important issue. I don’t want to out anyone, but Nick’s not alone on this one.

    (I’m anti a return to Perez Beast. Generally, I’m in the never-backwards corner in most arguments, at least if the primary motivation is simply fondness of how it once was.)

    I don’t *believe* it was Nick who suggested the “Let Stuart make a new one” position.

    And sorry for the mild harshness. As you note, it was kind of in response to your own, but it’s still not exactly best behaviour.

  36. D. says:

    And does Guido get a pass for when he killed some schmo while hypnotized? Peter David says “yes.”

  37. Jerry Ray says:

    There’s precedent for Hank reverting (back to his human form a time or two in the X-Factor days), so a regression wouldn’t exactly be coming out of left field. In fact, the recent ANXM issue would have had a perfect excuse to take him back to better days. I’d love to see him back to the Perez appearance, if only because all of his recent looks have been (IMHO) stupid and unappealing (and, as was pointed out above, kind of missing the fundamentals of the character).

  38. Thom H. says:

    “The thing that bothered me more than anything else about Cat-Beast was that, when he first appeared, Quitely drew him with big mitten-like cat paws, despite the fact that the Beast’s entire power set was supposed to be based around having oversized but hyperarticulate hands and feet. This was a guy who used to be able to type with his toes and now he looked like he’d be lucky to manage it with his fingers.”

    This was definitely meant to be default for the character, and was at least partly responsible for his wild mood swings in Morrison’s New X-Men. Hank was very worried about how he was apparently “devolving” from man to ape to cat. That’s what made it so easy for Cassandra Nova to cripple him with self-doubt, and it also explains (IMHO) why Hank eventually turned to Kick.

    The beauty of Cat Beast, again in my opinion, was that Hank actually missed being Ape Beast. It gave him a new relationship with his old body, a body he had some serious issues with before it changed into something even more problematic. Bendis’ change undoes a lot of that dramatic tension, but then so did all of the artists after Quitely who didn’t bother to draw Hank on model.

    I always disliked how artists disregarded Hank’s cat-like legs with their second “backwards” knee. That was clearly in the Quitely design, and just like the big clumsy paws it got thrown out again and again. Cassaday basically drew him as the Yeti with a cat head. Such a waste of a good design.

  39. Taibak says:

    I suppose the question then is what sort of design would work? If the cat body was too subtle for the average artist, it might not be worth keeping, but I agree that there isn’t much more of a reason to go back to the old ape body if the only motivation is nostalgia. Changing him repeatedly doesn’t seem like an answer either.

    So now what?

  40. Nick says:

    “Hank went to confession in XMU v.1 #10, but admits that he hadn’t been in a long time. I don’t see anything in UXM 524 that suggests Hank is a Christian.”

    You’re right. For some reason I remembered Hank giving the eulogy at Nightcrawler’s funeral when it was Iceman. I should have double-checked it before citing it.

    My apologies.

  41. ZZZ says:

    I think I just realized why the scene where Hank says he’s an atheist rang false to me: I don’t mind the Beast being portrayed as an atheist – he’s mentioned believing in God in the past, but that’s no reason he has to still believe, and I can completely see how dealing with the Phoenix Force would shake someone’s faith in an omnipotent being that didn’t bother to put in an appearance – but I can’t buy him saying “I think when you die you cease to be.”

    Hank’s met Illyana. He’s fought alongside or met people who fought alongside the Son of Satan, Ghost Rider, Brother Voodoo and two literal Valkyries. He knows people who’ve physically been to Valhalla, Hel and Hades. He knows people who’ve gone to hell, fought the devil, and BROUGHT PEOPLE BACK FROM THE OTHER SIDE. He knows for a fact that people in the Marvel Universe have souls and he knows for a fact that there are multiple afterlives where people’s souls go when they die. He knows literally dozens of people who’ve died and come back. He was talking to Jean freaking Grey when he made the comment.

    So I can buy the Beast as an atheist, but only in the sense of believing that the Judeo-Christian God he was raised to worship is probably just a guy like Thor or Hercules or Mephisto and is no more worthy of prayers and adoration than they are (and possibly less worthy, since at least they get off their clouds and get involved in the mortal world), or even believing that the Judeo-Christian God is the only deity humans have ever worshipped that doesn’t really exist in the Marvel Universe.

    The Beast saying he belives that “when you die you cease to be” smacks of a writer putting a real-world concept into an unreal world without thinking through whether or not it fits. Hank not believing in an afterlife makes as much sense as him not beliving in aliens, alternate dimensions, and psychic powers.

  42. Brian says:

    “…great another version of Beast to be badly drawn by other artists and ignored by editors of other books.”

    It was Tom Sutton who designed what people are now calling “Perez Beast.” I own a copy of Amazing Adventures #11. Believe me, Perez took some liberties of his own when he began drawing the character.

  43. Jeremy says:

    Kieron: Just glad to see so many people are as passionate about it as I am!

    I definitely agree with the “never-backwards” mentality, but in this particular case I just think the “Perez-Beast” is the superior design. As Bendis says in that video, “it looks cooler.” Although we’re into deep subjective territory at that point. I definitely want to talk to the folks at Newsarama/CBR and see about some kind of poll.

    Thom H.: I like the idea of Hank missing his old body, but I can’t think of one writer who did something with that concept after Morrison left. And even during Morrison’s run Hank was the least developed character. His biggest storyline was “Here Comes Tomorrow”, and it’s not even really him at that point. Additionally, Hank has seemed to retain the “ape” abilities that he had previously once Morrison left. The scene where he breaks into the facility to talk with Dr. Rao in the first arc of Astonishing X-Men comes to mind with him climbing and bouncing all over the place to get in there.

    It’s obviously too early to tell, but I’m anxious to see if this new design really says something about the character which would then in turn need to remain a part of the design. In that interview (link below) Nick Lowe says this new design and “Cat Beast” work for him because they’re “beastly” and work better for the character. I personally think the “Perez Beast” looks plenty beastly but if this new design does serve as a major part of the character in one way or another I’ll be happy.

    http://www.newsarama.com/comics/spoiler-sport-all-new-x-men-character-change.html

  44. Tim O'Neil says:

    I think part of what we’re getting at here is that regardless of whether or not people like the Cat Beast redesign, it was too complex to maintain cohesion over multiple artists. The old modified Sutton / Perez look had the virtue of being simple enough that it remained intact and distinctive through so many multiple interpreters.

  45. Brodie says:

    [i]I think part of what we’re getting at here is that regardless of whether or not people like the Cat Beast redesign, it was too complex to maintain cohesion over multiple artists.[/i]

    That makes sense, except for the part where it just seems like no artists even attempted to keep the design. Even Cassaday’s in Astonishing (as pretty as it was in general), didn’t quite look the same.

  46. Si says:

    ZZZ: Look at it this way. Beast would have known all about Mockingbird being in the Afterlife, but then she stepped off a space rocket and it turned out she was never dead in the first place. He also knew all about how Xavier once turned into a bug and died, except his brainwaves inhabited a lifeless clone and for many years of being apparently without a soul, he never once ate a puppy or even painted his fingernails black.

    It wouldn’t be difficult to extrapolate the hypothesis that the afterlife is just some place where there’s things that look like people who might be dead.

    Also, he worked for some time with Thor. Thor eats a lot of red meat. At some time Beast must have used the toilet after him. This would remove any lingering questions of divinity from even the most devout man.

  47. D. says:

    “I think when you die you cease to be.”

    Well let’s look at the example of Psylocke. She dies in XXM v.1 #2, and was resurrected in the First Foursaken story by her brother Jaime, who had to warp reality to do it. IIRC, it was pretty clear that she didn’t exist as a soul in any afterlife in the interim. She just “ceased to be” for the time she was dead.

    I haven’t read any stories with her as a character lately, so maybe there’s been a retcon since First Foursaken. But most resurrections require a gimmick; the character’s personality isn’t hanging out in a Marvel Hell or Heaven or Limbo. Those places exist not as a warehouse for dead souls, but as other dimensions where the living get jaunted around.

    With regards to Ghost Rider or similar characters who die and are brought back, perhaps it’s “resurrection” in the way Jaime Braddock did it, buy twisting reality, rather than restoring a continually existent “soul” to a living body. THough I suspect the latter has been explicity portrayed from time to time.

    Perhaps Marvel is just not consistent.

  48. Daibhid Ceannaideach says:

    I’ve just realised: New Beast is Brutus of the X’Changelings from Avataars: Covenant of the Shield.

    http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/earthavataars.htm#Brutus

  49. ZZZ says:

    @ D.:

    The reason I brought up Ghost Rider was because pretty much everything about the character requires the existence of souls and an afterlife – he sold his soul to Mephisto, he’s powered by a demon from hell who punishes sinners, his penance stare burns his enemies souls, etc. Likewise Valkyrie, Beast’s current teammate in the Secret Avengers, and Dani Moonstar have both been charged with collecting the souls of the dead to bring them to the afterlife. Hercules recently went to Hades and saw the souls of dead heroes and villains passing the time. Wolverine recently went to hell and interacted with the souls of people he’s killed. Hawkeye lead the Thunderbolts into hell and rescued Patsy Walker (thinking he was rescuing Mockingbird). Magik’s entire motivation was to reclaim her lost soul and in the process she pulled out a piece of Pixie’s soul. During the Chaos War, the souls of dead heroes returned to the world of the living, and I don’t think anyone knows about the dead Avengers or X-Men (who returned to the afterlife at the end of the war), but Alpha Flight stayed alive afterward. It’s a hard fact that there’s an afterlife in the Marvel Universe, and the Beast has a lot of friends and allies who have interacted with it. And even if that weren’t the case, virtually everyone the Beast knows has died and come back at least once – even if their souls didn’t go to an afterlife, they know that dead flesh can be resurrected and resume its previous life in the Marvel Universe.

  50. Billy says:

    Cat Beast wasn’t too complex a design for multiple artists and writers to maintain.

    Multiple artists and writers mostly just didn’t seem to care. Most likely, few even looked at Morrison/Quitely Beast, much less actually tried to copy what was originally done with it. Modern (at least the last decade) Marvel doesn’t care about even basic research of the characters being used.

    Some artists perhaps did see and know what Morrison/Quitely had done, and simply didn’t care. Maybe they felt they were “fixing” a “bad” idea. Or maybe they were just determined to draw the Beast that they wanted to draw (the same ways writers revert and otherwise alter characters when they come on a book).

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