{"id":3551,"date":"2016-09-21T22:47:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2016-09-21T22:47:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:47:22","slug":"all-new-x-men-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3551","title":{"rendered":"All-New X-Men #13"},"content":{"rendered":"

All-New X-Men<\/em> is doing a series of single issue character spotlights, from the look of it. \u00a0That’s a nice change from the prevailing fashion of\u00a0working in\u00a0story arcs the length of a trade paperback. \u00a0This issue is Bobby’s turn, as Idie and Evan take him clubbing in Miami in the hope of\u00a0getting him to talk to boys.<\/p>\n

Much of the issue is, if we’re being honest,\u00a0a fairly routine and straightforward piece of observational comedy-drama. \u00a0So Bobby is hopelessly nervous trying to\u00a0flirt,\u00a0Idie and Evan’s advice doesn’t really help\u00a0a great deal (not because it’s bad advice but because confidence can’t be taught), and he does a bit better when he’s trying to be himself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0all rather mundane, to be honest. \u00a0I’ve never subscribed to the view that talking to random strangers in bars is a particularly good way of\u00a0meeting people anyway, so I’m\u00a0in no place to speak from first-hand experience, but\u00a0it sure\u00a0reads like a bunch of\u00a0well-trodden tropes. \u00a0More to the point, though, it feels like the characters are being brutally shoehorned\u00a0into\u00a0the situation whether it makes any real sense for them to be there or not.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with Bobby. \u00a0Fair enough, his social\u00a0circle is pretty much confined to the regular cast, so his options for meeting new people are fairly\u00a0limited. \u00a0But the story wants him to be hopelessly awkward at flirting, period, and goes out of its way to emphasise\u00a0that it was no different with girls in his own time. \u00a0And that’s just wrong. \u00a0It would be nitpicking to complain that a late-sixties back-up strip establishes that he had a girlfriend at school. \u00a0But what about Zelda? \u00a0Bobby’s X-Men were brought to the future from\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #8; he had already started flirting with Zelda the previous issue. \u00a0(Incidentally, this story\u00a0also has Bobby recollecting the X-Men’s first battle with Unus – the one they would have had later in issue #8 if they hadn’t been brought to the present. \u00a0Oops.) \u00a0He was the one who kept dragging the X-Men back to the Coffee-a-Go-Go so that he could talk to her. \u00a0“Terrified of speaking to girls” is not a recognisable description of Silver Age Bobby.<\/p>\n

Another awkward question:\u00a0how old are these characters exactly? \u00a0Bobby was the youngest of the Silver Age team, who were (at the time) school children. \u00a0Idie and Evan come direct from doing classes at the Xavier School. \u00a0Mark Bagley is certainly drawing them as teenagers. \u00a0But this story wants him to be a direct peer of Miami clubbers. \u00a0Does that work? \u00a0Are Miami clubs notoriously relaxed about fake IDs? \u00a0I don’t know. \u00a0But it sure feels like a story that’s trying to put\u00a0four or five years on the ages of all its characters and hope nobody\u00a0notices.<\/p>\n

And… Idie and Evan? \u00a0Really? \u00a0These<\/em> are the characters who are going to teach\u00a0Bobby about clubbing, flirting, and being comfortable\u00a0in your own skin? \u00a0Idie and Evan<\/em>?!? \u00a0What possible experience do either of them have to offer? \u00a0The story presses them into the role because there’s nobody else to do it, but it’s completely unconvincing.<\/p>\n

The second half of the issue sees Bobby run into a character called Romeo\u00a0(subtle), who’s apparently being set up as his love interest. \u00a0Romeo is an Inhuman, and he manipulates people’s emotions, which he uses to\u00a0calm down people whose powers have only just emerged. \u00a0I can see that there’s some potential in this. \u00a0We’ve got an Inhumans\/X-Men crossover on the horizon, so some links between the camps are worth setting up; and there’s the old standard “how do I trust my feelings with a psychic”,\u00a0which hasn’t been gone for a while, and makes a perfectly good story.<\/p>\n

Is Romeo particularly compelling as a character beyond that? \u00a0Not really – he’s\u00a0a bit of a cipher, but depending on what story\u00a0Hopeless intends to tell with him, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. \u00a0At any rate,\u00a0Bobby’s initial encounter with him is\u00a0by the numbers stuff.<\/p>\n

This feels like a wasted opportunity. \u00a0In theory, a story about Bobby\u00a0trying to build confidence in talking to guys is a good idea. \u00a0In practice,\u00a0it wrestles\u00a0Idie and Evan into roles as more confident cooler friends that don’t fit them at all, and overplays Bobby’s awkwardness,\u00a0all\u00a0so that some rather familiar\u00a0clumsy flirting sequences can follow. \u00a0In fact,\u00a0if Idie and Evan had been as clumsy and awkward as Bobby,\u00a0it would have been a more interesting story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All-New X-Men is doing a series of single issue character spotlights, from the look of it. \u00a0That’s a nice change from the prevailing fashion of\u00a0working in\u00a0story arcs the length of a trade paperback. \u00a0This issue is Bobby’s turn, as Idie and Evan take him clubbing in Miami in the hope of\u00a0getting him to talk to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}