The All New X-Men Paradox
With mere days to wait until All-New X-Men #1 launches as part of the Marvel Now! initiative I thought it would be interesting to speculate, and this is all true fan speculation, on what may come from Brian Michael Bendis’ foray into the X-Men.
First off, let’s set the scene, the original X-Men, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Cyclops (Scott Summers), Iceman (Bobby Drake), Angel (Warren Worthington III) and Beast (Henry McCoy) travel forwards in time to have a word with their future selves. Why would they do such a thing I hear you cry, well it seems the X-Men have come a long way from their origins as Professor Xavier’s personal mutant militia, sorry I meant trusted students, and along the way philosophies have ben corrupted, some people died and some X-Men have gone right off the deep end…Scott I’m looking at you. In what can only be described as the Back to the Future MacGuffin, Beast travels back to a simpler time when the X-Men weren’t quite hairy in order to bring them ‘Back to the Future’,Bobby even makes the joke “Is it our kids?!”, showing that Bendis knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s gonna do it anyway:
I really don’t mind this obvious plot device, at least Bendis is having some fun with the concept and the characters, sometimes it’s good to get these little details out of the way so we can get on with some damn good storytelling.
The idea that you could travel to the future and have a word with yourself is an interesting if not original one, usually it works the other way around though. I’d love to go back and tell seven year old me that you’re supposed to let go in Kiss Catch otherwise you’re likely to fall, smash up your face, lose two teeth and be left with a scar that will last until the end of days but I can’t…that’s what comics are for. Maybe the reason it’s the other way around is because there aren’t many of us that could deal with the disappointment we would be to our younger selves, by now I thought I’d be married with two kids and be living on the moon, none of those things has happened, seven year old me would be pissed, mostly about the lack of moon house though. And this is where we land with the X-Men, Scott is not going to be happy with his future self, in fact I’m willing to place a rather large bet that he kicks his own ass and rightly so.
Scott Summers has gone from being the leader of the X-Men, a man handpicked by Professor X himself to usher in a new era of peaceful coexistence between mutant and human alike, to a murdering, adulterous, terrorist, despot who has not only turned his back on the teachings of Charles Xavier but also managed to see his former teacher into an early grave. That’s a long way to fall, sure beats the lack of moon house. What will Scott say to himself? Will he make any impression and if so what affect will that have on past Scott when he returns to the past?
That last question is the one that’s been bugging me, I can’t help but think this is going to go one of two ways, either when returned to the past, the original X-Men will either have their memories wiped by Hank so that they do not recall ever visiting their future selves, total cop out, or thy will remember everything and all of X-continuity will be changed forever, giving us a truly All-New X-Men. I’m not really going to address the first option, it’s cynical and would mean this whole thing has been for naught, I’m sure it’ll be a fun ride, especially with the sumptuous Stuart Immonen art to enjoy but ultimately it’ll end flat. The second option however has real legs, and it’s the sort of thing I can imagine Bendis insisting he be allowed to do.
Bendis is a fan, you can tell this by the way he writes characters, he knows them intimately and although characters written by Bendis do all seem to have his wit, they still stay true to themselves because he loves them. As a fan I’m sure it won’t have passed his notice that over the years the X-Men have gone pretty far off-track, this story used to be about learning, prejudice, growing up, family, love and hatred, all the things that matter but the cast has become bloated, characters have drifted from their core being, the number of X-Books has dramatically increased and most importantly somewhere along the line the point got lost. Nobody knows what to do with the X-Men anymore, there are too many of them and they are almost impenetrable to the casual or new reader. Enter Bendis, the man who relaunched the Avengers with 2005′s New Avengers, for the first time making them the true flagship Marvel Superhero team, something that had strangely eluded them up until this point. The man who managed to put Spider-Man on a superhero team and make it stick, who took Luke Cage from small time blaxploitation fodder to a leader of heroes, who invented a superhero, Jewel (Jessica Jones) and retconned her into the Marvel Universe so well, you couldn’t even see the seams, seriously I almost doubted myself when I first read Alias. If Bendis cannot fix the X-Men then nobody can.
So what of this All New X-Men paradox then? What will become of the X-Men? Who will stay and who will be dropped? How dramatically will the characters alter based upon the knowledge of their future selves? And isn’t this all a little extreme just to bring Jean Grey back from the dead? I’m not smart enough to work out how or what Bendis has in store for his revamped X-Men but I believe this could be the start of something big and love it or hate it…most likely hate it, the X-fans are in for a wild ride and maybe, just maybe the X-Men will finally get back on track.
About the Author
Gavin Jones Chief Sidekick at Sidekick Central, blogger, podcaster, reader of comics and sometimes other books. Lives in his ipad.
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Well Bendis did say that his Guardians of the Galaxy series would deal with the cosmic consistences of the x-men’s time travel.
Dammit, must’ve missed that one but that does add credence to my thoughts on the after effects
I came up with pretty much the same theory too! I really do hope that they use this as an attempt to retcon the shit out of the X-Men. I gave up on them after all that post-House of M madness and things have seemed to get weirder and less coherent since.
Sure I sort of dig the Cyclops/Wolverine taking over from Prof. X/Magneto thing they’ve been building the past few years but at the end of the day it just doesn’t seem right. Especially if you are a Cyclops fan like me. (Yes people like Cyclops, there are five of us and we do have a support group!) If they are going down the retcon route it means that Bendis and the rest of the X-Men writers will have the freedom to do whatever the heck they want for a few months before the reset button is pressed. They can do big, crazy, stupid things that will make people laugh and scream at the same time (a scraugh if you will). Say like making Cyclops a bad guy who kills Professor Xavier or making Wolverine the headmaster of a school OR have the X-Men have a big scrap with the Avengers!
I’m picking up All-New X-Men and I’m excited. It is the first X-Men book I will be buying for years (I usually get the cliffsnotes version of events from my brother) because it has the potential to “fix” the X-Men back to what I like about them.
Am i the only person who loves the current X-Men? I like the fact the story has evolved and thoroughly enjoyed House of M, Messiah Complex, the Utopia years and Scott’s turning to the dark side. Cyclops remains my favourite Marvel character and I’m sure he can redeem himself. I also kind of like the fact he’s now Magneto in reverse. I’m not sure the concept needs retconning – if you want the old school concept, Jason Arron’s Wolverine and the X-men is brilliant. I’m afraid I’ve never been taken by Bendis – he’s all big ideas that shake up everything. That’s fine now and again but gets old pretty quickly. Of course, I’ll still be reading the new comic!
At least the one thing we do all agree on is that we’ll be reading All-New X-Men.
There have been ups and downs in recent X-Men stories some good, some bad. I actually buy Cyclops’ journey to the dark side, it at least made him a little more interesting, what I’ve found a little more difficult to buy is Wolverine’s journey to headmaster of the Jean Grey School. Don’t get me wrong, I am loving Wolverine and the X-Men but it should’ve been the sort of story that started with Wolverine and then he left it in the hands of someone more suitable and capable, Kitty and Bobby for example. Him remaining at the school just doesn’t fit with the rest of his character, especially if you read Uncanny X-Force, which I do and absolutely love. On that note I believe it’s the best X book out there at the moment.
I can totally see what thenerdtheword is saying, maybe they are going a little crazy with the characters before they reboot, that’s an aspect I hadn’t considered previously.