Thursday, February 6, 2014

All New X-men #23 Lettered Preview - Teen Drama Geek Out

I’ve had my share of crazy visions when I’m asleep/passed out. Sometimes I’m riding a unicorn named Trevor through the English countryside while naked Swedish bikini models dance joyfully in the fields while pouring vodka on each other’s tits. Sometimes I’m strapped to table in my high school shop class and my former shop teacher is preparing to give a safety lesson on how not to use a table saw. It usually depends on the quality of the booze, weed, or LSD I happen to have at the time. But I imagine some people have more useful visions.

In the first two issues of the Trial of Jean Grey, Marvel’s latest effort at making crossovers feel less like a sales gimmick, the All New X-men and Guardians of the Galaxy have seen a painfully clear vision of the future. O5 Jean Grey grows up to be a woman who both pits Cyclops and Wolverine against one another in an endless dick-measuring contest and who gets drunk off Phoenix power and kills five billion aliens. Now that she’s back, albeit in a time-displaced fashion, the Shi’ar believe it’s time she go on trial for these crimes that she hasn’t technically committed. Since the Shi’ar justice system seems to be fashioned from the legal traditions of North Korea, I’m sure technicalities mean jack shit. So to save O5 Jean and possibly the entire space-time continuum, the O5 X-men must team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to save her. It’s not entirely clear what stake the Guardians have in it other than Starlord pissing off his father in a new way. Then again, that might be reason enough.

But part of what made the first part of the Trial of Jean Grey so gripping was how the emotional drama between O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean was developed. I made it a point to highlight it in my review. These two are not operating under the same kind of puppy love that they showed throughout the early years of the X-men. And I think that’s a good thing because love-at-first-sight and puppy love became legally dead after the invention of divorce lawyers, alimony, and child support. There’s still a place for it in comics, but the love between Cyclops and Jean Grey was badly in need of depth. And since learning about how fucked their future is, O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean Grey have had some tenuous emotional moments. However, the chemistry is still clearly there. And now that O5 Jean has been abducted, those emotions promise to boil over in a way that even teenage hormones can’t match.

All New X-men #23 promises to expand on that melodrama to a point where I can’t keep using teenage hormones as an excuse. An unlettered preview was already released a few weeks back. Now a lettered preview has emerged from Newsarama that finally allows me to stop imagining how the O5 X-men would react to being on a space ship with a machine gun wielding raccoon, a talking tree, and a hot green alien chick. But I’m okay with that. My imagination is creative enough to imagine plenty of other crazy shit.


• Jean is on trial and it’s up to the All-New X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy to get her free.


Once again, the teenage melodrama between O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean keeps building. They’ve been avoiding all those unpleasant details about their past and future relationship since All New X-men began. Now they’re running out of time to deal with it because if they don’t, the Shi’ar legal system will deal with it for them. And that would be like a married couple letting Chris Brown handle their divorce. It’s overdue, but the implications are still unknown. Could this be a One More Day type deal or a Superman/Wonder Woman type deal? It’s hard to say at this point, but at least the drama isn’t taking a back seat to animals shooting machine guns. As entertaining as that is, there’s a place for melodrama in stories about time displaced teenagers. Just look at Back to the Future and try to ignore the incest.

In addition, the novelty of working with aliens is undeniably appealing. O5 Beast looks like he just got into a limousine with William Shatner, Leonard Nemoy, and George Lucas. He and the rest of the O5 X-men are still at an age where their experience with aliens is limited. Whereas their older selves deal with aliens at least once a month, this is a first for them. I imagine it helps that Gamora and Angela look damn good in revealing space suits. Any overwhelming situation can be made more palatable if beautiful women are involved. Nuff said!

18 comments:

  1. Definitely looking forward to it.

    If I understand correctly from the last GotG issue, the Guardians care about this event because the Badoon are waiting for the Shi'ar to make fools of themselves with this Jean Grey trial, thus weakening their position in the galaxy and taking attention off the Badoon and giving them an opportunity invade Earth's solar system. So the Guardians are looking to prevent that I guess. This is the first GotG issue I've read so I may have missed something though.

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  2. I sure hope they won't complicate things, with that vision from issue 5. Really no need for that triangle to happen.

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  3. Another OMD incoming. Xorn-Jean already made it very clear in BOTA. These 2 will never get together.

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    1. The whole of ANXM till now was Jean trying her best to have a future "Without Scott". With her flirting with other teammates and kissing beast and the wedding invite etc. Now I think she is finally going to make it happen lol.

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    2. Bendis could be doing that. He could also be breaking the relationship down for the purposes of building it back up. Decades of the 'permanent love triangle' status quo has not done any favors to anyone involved. As a result the Scott/Jean relationship is on a crumbling foundation, and that has to be addressed no matter the final outcome. They could get back together, or they could never get together while remaining best friends. We will just have to wait and see, and hope that no matter the outcome, the road there stays entertaining.

      Rothstien-Smash

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    3. How long i remember, lady xorn was telling that to present!cyclops, that she is not his jean, i.e. the dead white phoenix; besides, i dont if you notice, but she speak to O5 cyclops in a very different way, she talks to him like he has been dead, or at least, in a coma for a long time, and she really miss him so much, like if she were rewatching some kind of happier home movie.
      And anyways, that future probably is no longer THE future, and now instead is an alternate reality/future.

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    4. I did notice the tone xorn/jean spoke to Cyclops in.but did anyone notice in ANXM 16 at the end when future Xavier told O5 beast he made the right choice by not leaving with jean.it felt like Xavier wanted O5 jean and scott too go off on there own.

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  4. BOTA jean said a lot of things.who knows what was true and what was embellished to convince everyone to send the O5 gang back where they belong.

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  5. if they get the OMD treatment then they would have to just reboot everything...No Scott/Maddie = No Cable = No Hope = No AvX = No All-New X-men...see how this works bendis???

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    1. You can easily get there even if they OMD the relationship (and that is only suspected, not proven currently).

      Cable comes from the fact that there is still a Scott, a Jean, and a Sinister willing to play mad scientist. That's what they did in the Wolverine and the X-Men animated series.

      Rothstien-Smash

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    2. Cable could always be made just a clone of Scott and Jean's DNA. But yeah, it would be a dick move of epic proportions. No need to OMD the most important relationship in X-Men history, I hope...

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    3. I doubt Bendis will remove it permanently. I predict the following.

      Either the love triangle will be Jean/Scott/their insecurities about each other (the triangle will exist in their own minds) OR

      Scott will get with Laura, which will make Jean realize she wants to be with him. Much of the rest of the series will have a B plot of Jean trying to make that happen. If that happens, I also predict messageboards will push how Scott is a 100% to blame jerk for moving away from Jean despite her pushing him away like he deserved. Bendis will talk about how the relationship isn't required to maintain continuity in order to troll the fans, but in the end he will build it back up. Heads explode at CBR.

      Rothstein-Smash

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    4. the thing that annoys me the most is all these teases that they will end up together when you know marvel is just gonna OMD them because BOTA jean says she would never love him.05 jean is dead set on not having any feelings for O5 scott...its like we already know the end of the story and the beginning and bendis is just filling in the middle with this whole trial of jean grey arc.

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    5. You know that O5 cyclops and present-day cyclops are not the same, right ?, besides how i long i remember what she told to adult cyclops was that he (present-day adult cyclops) would never love her, because she is not her (the dead White Phoenix of the Crown).

      Anyways, what we know is that she never was in relationship with him, the adult one, also that she blames him and wolverine for whatever happened to her in the future; but apparently she was in one with O5 cyclops or at least she wish she were, before something happened to him, also she seems to miss him so much; and well, O5 jean says one thing, but acts in the opposite way, because for someone who doesnt have feeling for him, she looks like she does have; for instance, she was really worried when the sentinel shot him, she look rather jealous of x-23, and definitely she liked what she saw when they were changing their clothes in BOTA. (fun fact: captain america once said that wolverine will never ever be an avenger, so i doubt that a teenager is any better at keeping their word)

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  6. Wow, I'm so behind on all the comments with this. Sorry about that guys. Blackouts are a bitch. There still seems to be a sentiment that we could have another One More Day on our hands. It would be consistent with Marvel and DC's new "fuck established couples" initiative. But as someone else pointed out, retconning the Cyclops/Jean relationship is a lot harder than Peter/MJ because of how integral their relationship has been to the history of the Marvel universe. Undoing that will undo a lot of crazy shit. And after Age of Ultron, I think the Marvel universe has had enough of that.

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