X-men Battle of the Atom #2 PREVIEW - Short and Not Very Informative

I know I give the impression that I have a very short attention span. I could blame years of booze, weed, and cartoons. But that would be like Betty White blaming a calendar for making her old. I do get impatient with things like traffic, flights, and organ transplants. But when it comes to comics, I am willing to be patient. I understand that nothing good comes from rushing something. Any man who suffers from premature ejaculation can attest to that. It’s just that my patience with comics does have a limit and X-men Battle of the Atom has been testing that limit lately.

I’ve already done plenty of drunken rants about it in my recent reviews. X-men Battle of the Atom is awesome in concept, but lacking in details. We still don’t know what the fuck the future Brotherhood was trying to accomplish by sending the O5 X-men back. We don’t know what the fuck O5 Jean saw in Xorna’s mind that horrified her enough to agree to go back to the past. And we don’t know what the fuck is keeping the O5 X-men in the present. That’s a lot of fucks that aren’t known for a 10-part event that only has one part left. That part is supposed to come out in less than a week and the cynic in me is very skeptical that all these loose ends can be tied up in one issue.

I had hoped that a preview of X-men Battle of the Atom #2 would offer some clues as to whether we’ll get the resolutions necessary to make this event awesome in a way worthy of being the X-men’s 50^th anniversary event. And like previous issues, one was released courtesy of Newsarama.

Newsarama: X-men Battle of the Atom #2 PREVIEW
However, this preview has about as much to offer as Paris Hilton at a physics lecture.

That’s really all we get. And it’s basically shit that anyone who read the last three pages of Wolverine and the X-men #37 could have surmised. It wouldn’t even take a bong hit, although I’m sure that would make it more interesting. The missiles had already been fired in the previous issue. This preview just shows the X-men looking deadpanned while Xorna and Xavier look like a 13-year-old boy that just discovered his father’s porno stash. The only hint it offers is Kid Omega beating the shit out of Xorna and Xavier. And if a hint like that can fit in a tweet, then it’s not much of a preview.

This leads me to a crazy theory that I came up with while sleeping off my last hangover. I think Marvel rushed this series. I think they had a much more coherent plan from the beginning, but plans often change at the whims and/or sobriety of the creators. And when a big event has multiple creators, like Battle of the Atom, then there are more cooks in the kitchen capable of fucking something up. Perhaps it’s because this is the X-men’s 50^th anniversary and not just some other generic X-men event that Marvel is rushing it. They understand that delaying an anniversary event is like delaying a birthday. It looks pretty fucking stupid when they roll out a cake weeks or months after the date has passed. And all these loose ends and poor details lead me to believe that Marvel rushed way too much. In the same way that being drunk makes it easier to forget basic traffic laws, rushing a story makes it easy to overlook certain details. So perhaps this is why X-men Battle of the Atom has had more plot holes than O.J. Simpson’s alibi.

This is just me blindly speculating. I’m just trying to interpret what I’ve noticed after nine issues of story. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate Marvel’s commitment to avoiding delays. They’re basically taking the opposite approach that Congress has taken. But at some point, being on time isn’t a substitute for being right. It doesn’t matter how early I am to a job interview. If I’m not wearing pants, I’m not going to succeed. I still hold out hope that Battle of the Atom won’t crash and burn like Avengers vs. X-men. For nine issues, it has actually been very good in many areas. Despite plot holes, I can’t say any character is significantly OOC or that there have been any egregious fuck ups. If the event ends without adding such fuck ups, I’ll still consider it a success. But like a strip club with a three hundred dollar lap dance at a Mexican strip club, I’m expecting more. Nuff said!