{"id":4319,"date":"2018-09-27T22:44:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T21:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4319"},"modified":"2018-09-27T22:44:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T21:44:36","slug":"x-men-blue-33-36-surviving-the-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4319","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Blue #33-36: “Surviving the Experience”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If\u00a0X-Men Gold\u00a0<\/em>had the problem of doing a final issue when nothing was really ending,\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> has a slightly different problem: the time-travelling teens’ tenure in 2018 is tantalisingly close to termination! \u00a0They look set to return to the sixties! \u00a0A simpler, more alliterative and exclamatory time! \u00a0There’s a real ending here!<\/p>\n

Or rather, there’s a real ending, but it’s over in\u00a0Extermination<\/em>, which isn’t even written by Cullen Bunn. \u00a0Nor does it particularly lend itself to any kind of plot set-up. \u00a0So instead\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> spends its last issues tying up some loose ends and character arcs, and trying to provide a sense of closure to the run.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This matters, because the ending for these characters is a challenging one to pull off. \u00a0If these really are the original X-Men, and they really are going to wipe the slate clean and go back to let the timeline resume its flow, then they remember none of this – and so what was the point of it, really? \u00a0Part of the project here is to try and answer that question.<\/p>\n

But first! \u00a0Even though these four issues are billed as a single storyline, “Surviving the Experience”, in reality it’s a pair of two-issue stories. \u00a0Issues #33-34 are a time travel story, showing what happened to Magneto when he briefly escaped into the future during the “Mothervine” arc, still reeling from having killed some of the Mothervine mutants when he was backed into a corner. \u00a0It’s a near future, and it’s a dystopia, because aren’t they all? \u00a0(I can’t help feeling that there’s a gap in the market in 2018 for optimistic visions of the future, which are in short supply, but something tells me the X-Men won’t be filling that void any time soon.)<\/p>\n

Marcus To does a suitably bleak wrecked city in issue #33, which at least feels like people used to live there, and his clunky cyberpunk Reavers are pretty good as well. \u00a0It’s nicely paced, with a low-key first half of Magneto wandering the city before he finally switches on and takes the Reavers apart in a couple of panels. \u00a0The twist is that Magneto assumes this is a world that somehow resulted from what he did to the Mothervine mutants, but in fact the survivors greet him as a hero. \u00a0Since Magneto is in one of his self-loathing moods at the time, he’s not best pleased by the idea that a bunch of people idolise him for his radical revolutionary stuff; it seems the world was wrecked by the battles he fought in defence of mutants, even if he was on the right side, it brings us back to the idea that Magneto’s tactics are ultimately destructive, and deep down, he knows it.<\/p>\n

That’s a repeated theme in Cullen Bunn’s take on Magneto – he knows where this is going to lead, but he can’t control or resist his anger enough to refrain. \u00a0But at the same time, it’s not immediately clear what he did wrong here other than simply show up to fight the Reavers at all – and indeed that’s the line which the survivors take, making him a rather bleak symbol of relative optimism for them. \u00a0Still, it turns out that he did go on something of a tirade after “Mothervine”, causing a ton of destruction supposedly in the name of defending mutants, even if some of those mutants do remember him fondly. \u00a0The original X-Men – who are, after all, the stars of the book – never went home in this timeline, and have a crack at killing Magneto in case that makes a difference to the timeline.<\/p>\n

In fact, Magneto does indeed avert the timeline on his return to the present, by nipping this version of the Reavers in the bud (with excessive force). \u00a0Cullen Bunn’s lengthy run on Magneto, dating back to the\u00a0Magneto<\/em> solo series, ends with him taking out an entirely genuine threat to mutants, but also retreating into his Silver Age villain mode, holed up on a new Asteroid M and slipping back into his old ways. \u00a0On one level it’s basically the reset button to get him back to Trad Magneto for future stories, but it makes sense in other ways too. \u00a0Magneto’s tragic flaw, in Bunn’s stories, is his inability to transcend his dark side; so it works to end on him succumbing again. \u00a0What’s more, it means that even if he’s separated from the X-Men in this story, in his own way, Magneto is going back to the Silver Age too, and his own simpler time.<\/p>\n

That takes us to the final two issues, and the X-Men themselves. \u00a0In issue 35, young Jean has a final lunch with her older self – quite well done by To, who has to draw two very similar-looking characters in extended conversation, and keeps them distinct and reasonably interesting. \u00a0Older Jean reveals that she can now remember her time-travel stint, thanks to yadda yadda Phoenix something yadda. \u00a0On a plot level, that helps to nail down the idea that these really are the genuine X-Men, and always were, but also closes the door on any suggestion that they could stay. \u00a0(It also creates a plot hole for Extermination<\/em>, since surely older Jean should know what’s coming… but okay.) \u00a0At the same time, it opens the door for some of this stuff to matter in the future, partly because the older X-Men might remember it after all, but also because we’re reminded that the older X-Men might at least have been affected by their visitors from the past. \u00a0Iceman certainly was, after all.<\/p>\n

There’s also an attempt in here to make this a “growing up” parable, in which Jean and the other X-Men have to embrace growing up, even though change will make them into different people who they don’t recognise. \u00a0That doesn’t really work, because what they’re doing is a step backwards in terms of their personal development, not a progression forward – but you get the idea.<\/p>\n

Hank, Bobby and Warren also get the chance to talk with their older selves one last time, and Bobby faces the obvious point that if he’s going back in time, he won’t be openly gay any more. \u00a0This feels like it needed an awful lot more weight, and there just isn’t space to do it here without having it dominate the story. \u00a0It’s a good scene as far as it goes, but Bobby’s feelings on the topic feel underdone, even if the basic idea – that he accepts the necessity of it, because Time – is fair enough. \u00a0Scott, of course, doesn’t have anyone to talk to, because he knows he’s going home to die. \u00a0Good old Scott.<\/p>\n

Issue #36 really does go full tilt on tying up the stray plot threads. \u00a0Mojo TV is taken down in two pages. \u00a0Scott says goodbye to Corsair and the Starjammers, who make a big point of stressing that Corsair’s second chance to connect with his son in the\u00a0Cyclops<\/em> series really mattered a hell of a lot to him. \u00a0The remaining supporting cast from Madripoor hook up with the Raksha. \u00a0The new Mothervine mutants arrive at the Xavier Institute. \u00a0Scott and Jean are back together. \u00a0The Poison version of Jimmy shows up to take out a bad guy. \u00a0And that’s pretty much it, leaving the X-Men mentally ready to go home, and only the plot mechanics to go – something which can be kicked off to another time.<\/p>\n

Considering the inherent limitations of trying to end the series without actually sending the X-Men home, this is a good final arc. \u00a0It plays to the strengths of the series, and it really does manage to attach a bit of weight and closure to something that could easily have come across as hammering the cosmic reset button. \u00a0It’s a strange call to keep Magneto and the X-Men separated in these issues, especially as the book ends with them heading off on one last mission to fight Magneto’s new team (something that isn’t a lead-in to\u00a0Extermination<\/em>). \u00a0That’s a relationship that feels like it never quite came to fruition. \u00a0But as a season finale for Cullen Bunn’s X-Men work, this satisfies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If\u00a0X-Men Gold\u00a0had the problem of doing a final issue when nothing was really ending,\u00a0X-Men Blue has a slightly different problem: the time-travelling teens’ tenure in 2018 is tantalisingly close to termination! \u00a0They look set to return to the sixties! \u00a0A simpler, more alliterative and exclamatory time! \u00a0There’s a real ending here! Or rather, there’s a […]<\/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-4319","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\/4319","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=4319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4320,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4319\/revisions\/4320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}