{"id":3676,"date":"2017-02-07T22:48:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T22:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3676"},"modified":"2017-02-07T22:48:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T22:48:09","slug":"all-new-x-men-17-18-inhumans-vs-x-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3676","title":{"rendered":"All-New X-Men #17-18: Inhumans vs X-Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0crossover is upon us. \u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> has two issues tying in to\u00a0Inhumans vs X-Men<\/em>, a crossover which is welcome only in the sense that it might finally draw a line under\u00a0a direction that\u00a0didn’t work at all.\u00a0\u00a0It’s not the sort of thing that\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em>, a book about teenagers\u00a0on an endless road trip in a magic bus, particularly lends itself to.<\/p>\n

But the biggest problems here stem, not surprisingly, from the fact that\u00a0Inhumans vs X-Men<\/em> itself is just a dud premise. \u00a0I’ve been through this before, but\u00a0let’s recap briefly. \u00a0The story is driven by the\u00a0Terrigen\u00a0clouds which are floating around the world empowering\u00a0latent Inhumans and killing mutants. \u00a0The X-Men, having bent over backwards to try to find some other way of solving the problem,\u00a0have now exhausted their options and are getting rid of the cloud. \u00a0This, apparently,\u00a0is supposed to be some sort of moral dilemma.<\/p>\n

And it simply isn’t. \u00a0It isn’t even a dilemma\u00a0in the prologue miniseries where\u00a0Cyclops – or rather, an\u00a0illusion of Cyclops created by Emma Frost for\u00a0publicity purposes – destroys one of the two clouds, because\u00a0it’s a poison gas cloud, for god’s sake<\/em>. \u00a0The X-Men are obviously right. \u00a0The Inhumans are obviously wrong. \u00a0And the story bends over backwards dementedly trying to convince us that both sides have a point. \u00a0It’s totally ridiculous, and it means that\u00a0every\u00a0story that touches it is kneecapped\u00a0before panel 1.<\/p>\n

All-New X-Men<\/em>‘s tie-ins consist of two spotlight issues which are perfectly fine in terms of what they bring to the table, but are stuck working with a dud idea. \u00a0Incidentally, the decision to go with two more solo issues is a curious one. \u00a0It fits nicely with Marvel’s current\u00a0crossover format, where one book does the real plot and everyone else does something in the margins. \u00a0But\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> has only just completed a string of solo issues, and it feels like the team element is getting sidelined a bit.<\/p>\n

Issue #17 is an Iceman story, picking up the obvious dilemma which was set up\u00a0a\u00a0few issues ago: Iceman has divided loyalties because his boyfriend Romeo\u00a0is an Inhuman. \u00a0Of course, the story desperately wants us to accept that young Iceman is appalled by the X-Men’s plan because they’re going to “destroy the cornerstone of the Inhuman society”, which I guess is just about a defensible position if he’s supposed to have doubts about whether it really is going to kill all the mutants.<\/p>\n

So anyway, Iceman joins in the big attack on Attilan and then goes his own way and rescues Romeo, and that’s basically your issue. \u00a0To\u00a0the book’s credit, it rounds things out with some\u00a0decently observed flashback sequences\u00a0which do a respectable job of selling\u00a0a relationship with a character who was only just introduced, and if you’re prepared to run with the idea that there’s some sort of dilemma in play here (which is an act of tremendous generosity, but the book implores you to play along), it just about gets away with it. \u00a0The relationship really needed a longer build-up to give it the weight it needs – and Romeo remains a bit of a cute cipher\u00a0with an overly obvious name – but Hopeless and Bagley\u00a0do enough\u00a0to sell the idea that Bobby cares,\u00a0which is enough to get by.<\/p>\n

Issue #18 is a Cyclops story. \u00a0And here we hit bigger problems, because\u00a0pretty much the whole issue hinges on you accepting the\u00a0idea\u00a0that\u00a0the older Cyclops’s supposed destruction of the first Terrigen cloud was an act of unfathomable monstrous villainy,\u00a0a concept which\u00a0– have I mentioned this? – has singularly failed to get off the ground. \u00a0Now, if you’re willing to buy that starting point, there’s a set-up to work with here, because young Scott’s direction is largely about trying to escape from the shadow of what the older Scott did, and here he’s being specifically confronted with the Inhumans themselves.<\/p>\n

But that is one hell of an If, despite the book’s strenuous efforts to convince us otherwise. \u00a0“The world sees Scott Summers as a hate criminal who committed pre-emptive Inhuman genocide”, apparently,\u00a0but this is blithering nonsense. \u00a0This book is\u00a0trying\u00a0so hard<\/em> to make this work – it’s the\u00a0centrepiece of an entire take on a central character\u00a0–\u00a0but the foundations are just not there. \u00a0The pay-off of this issue is Scott learning that Emma tricked everyone and that his older self never actually destroyed the first cloud after all. \u00a0In theory that should be a really strong moment as Scott learns that he never committed the terrible crime which has been dominating his thoughts for so long – and his relief and anger at Emma do kind of work – but it can’t transcend the\u00a0basic defects in the whole premise.<\/p>\n

These two issues actually come quite close to working, purely on the strength of the emotional reactions of the main characters. \u00a0If they’d had a viable central plot to play off, they’d probably have been good. \u00a0But I don’t think anyone can make the Inhumans \/ X-Men stuff work at this point. \u00a0Let’s just get it over with and move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0crossover is upon us. \u00a0All-New X-Men has two issues tying in to\u00a0Inhumans vs X-Men, a crossover which is welcome only in the sense that it might finally draw a line under\u00a0a direction that\u00a0didn’t work at all.\u00a0\u00a0It’s not the sort of thing that\u00a0All-New X-Men, a book about teenagers\u00a0on an endless road trip in a magic bus, […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3676","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\/3676","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=3676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}