Spoiler Alert: All New X-men #22

The following is my review of All New X-men #22, which was posted on PopMatters.com.

In an era of spoilers and leaked scripts, it's next to impossible to react naturally and genuinely to a surprise ending. It has become as common as popcorn and soda at a movie to look up spoilers before committing to the ending. That crushing fear that such a commitment would end in disappointment is too much of a risk. And when its known ahead of time that an ending is going to disappoint, it's easier to just avoid that feeling altogether. It may seem lazy , but it makes too much sense to discount. And since the internet can't be uninvented, it's a phenomenon that's here to stay.

But what if someone read the full spoiler, hated it so much that it was mentally traumatic, and was forced to watch it anyways? There aren't any documented cases of anyone being trapped in a movie theater and forced to watch Godfather 3 so it's difficult to imagine in the real world. But that's exactly what Jean Grey has to do through in the pages of All New X-men. Early on in the series, she was given the full spoiler of how her life and multiple deaths would play out. It didn't just upset it. Her devastated her to the point where it created an alternate future timeline where she went insane and tried to erase her existence. Even angry Star Wars fan that were upset by Episode I: The Phantom Menace couldn't relate to that.

And she has been struggling to confront her future throughout the series. Being an emotionally confused teenager, she doesn't exactly have a winning record. But in All New X-men #22, which is the first issue in the much-anticipated Trial of Jean Grey arc, her future finally confronts her. It would be akin to a major movie spoiler requiring a certain number of broken bones to reveal. And these particular wounds for Jean Grey run deep. They harken back to the Dark Phoenix Saga, by far one of the most important events in Jean's life and that of the X-men. The crimes she committed while under the influence of the Phoenix Force can't be understated, especially for a teenage girl that has been content to avoid the ramifications to this point.

But it isn't just the crimes of Dark Phoenix that Jean Grey is forced to confront in All New X-men #22. She also finally gets to vent some of her emotional frustrations with Cyclops. It is actually a lot more pressing than anything having to do with the Phoenix. Her relationship with Cyclops is every bit as important to her personal mythos as the Phoenix Force. And the spoilers she uncovered about their relationship were every bit as traumatic as what she uncovered about the Phoenix Force.

It's easy for a couple of hormonal teenagers to embrace the most basic forms of puppy love. It's much harder to embrace the idea that the most important relationship in Jean's life ends with her dying and her lover ending up with someone else who happens to be her hated rival. It puts an indelible stain on all those future happy moments because like a pig that knows it will eventually become a plate of bacon, the ending is always looming.

Jean doesn't exactly have a heart-to-heart with Cyclops that ends in Hallmark moment. There are still a lot of unresolved emotions that have been developing since All New X-men began. But Cyclops goes out of his way to let her know that regardless of what she knows about their future, he still cares about her. And Jean claims that she's dealing with it when she's clearly doing a very poor job of it. She's basically an angry girlfriend giving her lover the silent treatment, saying one thing and showing the opposite. It's another instance of inexperienced teenagers struggling to deal with the harsh truths of the real world and coping skills at that age might as well be a mutant power that none of the original X-men have. In fact, the one who seems to cope best is Iceman. All he needs is snow and Run DMC music to be content in the future.

But neither Jean nor anyone else in the time-displaced X-men get a chance to improve their coping skills. With so many issues between her and Cyclops left unaddressed, the Shi'ar arrive to address her future for her. She and the rest of the team are blindsided by someone else that knows the spoilers to Jean Grey's life all too well. This makes the outcome of the battle fairly predictable, but the struggle still resonates because the emotions that Jean Grey vented with Cyclops are still raw. This establishes the theme of a teenage girl who can't process the future knowledge she has about herself. She can barely process being able to know the intimate thoughts of her friends and teammates. Now a bunch of hostile aliens are prepared to process it for her and that creates an emotional impact that hits all the right chords. It won't make anyone gasp like the first three seasons of Lost, but it will make it hard not to care for Jean Grey and what she is going through.

The underlying premise of All New X-men #22 is basic but effective. Reading the spoilers for this issue won't surprise anyone, but that's not the point. The intent of this issue is to create an emotional investment in Jean Grey so that even the fans who complain about her inability to stay dead will care about what happens to her. By that standard, this issue succeeds. The battle against the Shi'ar and the arrival of the Guardians of the Galaxy is secondary, so much so that it doesn't resonate as much as it should. But it fits into an emotionally compelling narrative that involves more than just a couple of teenagers struggling to process the real world with their limited life experiences.

Cyclops and Jean Grey's hopes and dreams about the future may be crushed much earlier than it is for most typical teenagers, but they don't have the luxury of curling up into ball and sulking until they accept it. They have to confront what's going to happen to them. And if they don't, a race of angry, war-loving aliens is going to do it for them.

Final Score: 7 out of 10

Scanned Thoughts: All New X-men #22

Crossover events are like mixed drinks. They can bring out a unique flavor that can’t be tasted otherwise. It’s a beautiful thing. But there’s a fine line between mixing rum and coke and mixing gasoline with battery acid. Some will lead to good times and mildly damaged organs. Others will lead to uncontrollable vomiting, arrests for public intoxication, and permanently damaged organs. Like that guy that keeps trying to grow new strains of weed, Marvel has been hit or miss with their crossovers. Stories like Fear Itself and Avengers vs. X-men ended up being as appealing as expired milk. But Age of Ultron and Infinity ended up being like fresh whiskey. Now the All New X-men are crossing over with the Guardians of the Galaxy in the Trial of Jean Grey. It’s an event that will have O5 Jean confront the most pivotal moment of her future life and she’ll have to do it alongside a machine gun wielding raccoon. The premise itself makes it sound difficult to fuck up, but it is possible. I’m going to try and keep that in mind as I review All New X-men #22 and I’ll need to write down more reminders in between bong hits in order to remember for the ending.

That said, the O5 X-men have much healthier ways of reminding themselves than I do and none of them involve risk another public intoxication charge on their rap sheet. With X-23 having joined the team, they seem to have settled into a steady regiment. X-23 trains. O5 Beast scribbles convoluted physics problems on a chalkboard. And O5 Iceman takes some time out of his day to make snow angels and sing Run DMC songs from the 80s. Okay, so it’s not exactly a logical regiment, but at least they have good tastes in music. It would be a lot more ominous if O5 Iceman was humming Kanye West or Chris Brown. There’s enough violence in comic books as it stands. So this bit of insight into the less hectic part of the O5’s time-displaced lives is refreshing.

But not everyone can cope with the aid of physics, training, and Run DMC. Those people are generally the same people who need to improve their coping skills, but I think O5 Jean and O5 Cyclops are the exception. Between O5 Jean seeing an evil version of herself try to nullify her existence and O5 Cyclops getting all horny around Wolverine’s female teenage clone, they deserve a pass when it comes to poor coping skills. But they don’t get a pass for dragging O5 Angel into it. The kid was just enjoying a greasy, artery clogging burger when they sat down and decided to snap at each other. I feel sorry for the guy and for everyone who ever just wanted to enjoy a good burger. O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean have a sizable shit platter to deal with. That doesn’t mean they should make someone else shove their face in it.

It seems like another immature teenage outburst at first, on par with a blood feud over who gave that creepy kid in gym class their phone number. But there is a more serious issue to discuss here that has been developing for 22 fucking issues. O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean know how their future plays out and they know how their relationship plays out. Yet since the early days of All New X-men, they haven’t really confronted it. At times, O5 Cyclops has tried. And O5 Jean has been content to treat those attempts the same way Charlie Sheen treats a drug test. They had their chances during X-men Battle of the Atom, but crazy shit kept getting in the way, namely a homicidal older version of Jean. But like a tumor on their forehead, they can’t ignore it forever.

The hostility eventually gives way to a more serious discussion. Lost in the teenage melodrama is that little detail that O5 Jean knows about what happens to herself and her relationship with Cyclops in the future. But O5 Cyclops doesn’t know. He just knows from a wedding invitation and unscrupulous internet searches that he and Jean get married, have a kid, and die on each other at least once. And the shit he doesn’t know that O5 Jean knows is bad enough that she wants nothing to do with him and is more than willing to let her other teammates soak her panties. O5 Cyclops is understandably curious, but at the end of the day he prefers not to know and that might be for the best. Even his balls might not be able to take the strain.

Debate about the future eventually gives way to concern about the present. In a moment that may upset those looking for a new reason to hate Cyclops, he at least reminds O5 Jean that he still cares about her, regardless of whether she’ll ever let him see her naked. And she reminds him just how much shit she has to cope with. It’s a nice summation of the long ass list of issues that these two are dealing with. It’s full of teenage melodrama, but not the kind that made Twilight a godsend for bulimics.

Some may be tired at this point of the overly dramatic Cyclops/Jean side-plot that has been unfolding in All New X-men since it started, but I prefer to take the longview here and I usually don’t do that in anything that doesn’t involve finding a new weed dealer. It’s easy for younger X-men fans to forget that for most of their history, the Cyclops/Jean melodrama was flatter than Kristen Stewart’s acting. So much of it was built around the love-at-first-sight shit that Shakespeare plays and Hugh Grant movies made so agonizing. It didn’t really get a lot of depth until the Phoenix Saga came along. And now All New X-men is forcing Cyclops and Jean Grey to relate to one another on a very different level. They can’t just rely on the shit the Beatles sang about. They have to deal with some very tough emotional issues that most adults aren’t qualified to handle. And given that they’re the most iconic relationship in the history of X-men, I think that’s good for them and good for the X-men mythos as a whole.

What isn’t good for them or any mythos for that matter is a surprise attack by aliens. It’s one of those things that seems to happen every other Monday in the Marvel universe. It may seem random, but having O5 Jean and O5 Cyclops vent so many emotions only makes it feel more urgent because these aliens came fucking prepared. They interrupt O5 Iceman’s celebration of 80s rap classics and storm the base like the IRS at Willie Nelson’s trailer. It’s not a fair fight and we already knew from the title that it was coming. But O5 Jean’s emotional outburst just makes it harder not to give a few extra fucks about what these aliens have planned for them. There’s an anal probe joke in there somewhere, but I don’t want to make light of O5 Jean’s emotional state.

The team rallies, showing that they haven’t been slacking on their training in the way most teenagers might slack in their algebra homework. The alien attackers aren’t packing tentacles, face raping spores, or oversized heads. They look like Call of Duty cos-players armed with alien death rays. It’s not quite as awesome as it sounds, but it generates the kind of action that will satisfy most casual stoners. Kitty Pryde recognizes them as Shi’ar, which probably doesn’t mean jack shit to the O5 X-men. But it does help make the attack seem less random. Since aliens have been attacking Earth with the same regularity as Rush Limbaugh attacks President Obama, it helps to have context.

But knowing the names of the aliens they’re dealing with doesn’t do jack shit in fighting the Shi’ar off. Like I said, they came prepared. They knew how to counter Kitty’s little trick of phasing through any machine and making it operate like the beta version of Windows Vista. They also knew how to counter their firepower and tactics. It’s a simple matter of trapping them all in glowing energy bubbles. I guess that’s more humane than drugging them with ketamine, but it robs them of the opportunity to have visions of Jessica Alba’s nipples so I still consider it horribly cruel. They probably could have taken everyone on the team hostage, but they only take O5 Jean Grey. The Shi’ar have a lot more reasons to shit themselves when it comes to Jean Grey so once she is contained, it’s mission accomplished as far as their concerned. It’s a very George W. Bush type move on their part, but I guess we can’t expect them to be that prepared.

It’s a pretty generic battle in which the outcome was never in question. The O5 X-men got their asses served to them with a side of fries, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some worthy highlights. O5 Iceman actually put up the best fight. He not only tried to protect the base from the Shi’ar’s initial invasion. He tried to stop them from escaping with O5 Jean, using a little giant ice punch to try and take them down. It’s by far the most badass move O5 Iceman has managed. Maybe singing Run DMC music helped strengthen his balls in a way that was exceedingly overdue. While it didn’t stop the Shi’ar from leaving with O5 Jean, at least it showed O5 Iceman doing more than just being an immature kid.

The rest of the team can’t say they put up as good a fight as O5 Iceman. They can only just pick their sore asses up and recognize how fucked they are. The Shi’ar now have O5 Jean and probably don’t care that anything they do to her could fuck up the entire space-time continuum. The Shi’ar didn’t get to be an inter-steller powerhouse by practicing restraint in the same way Lady Gaga didn’t get so much attention by dressing modestly. It’s very much a “we’re so fucked” moment and because of O5 Jean’s conversation with O5 Cyclops earlier, it has some emotional weight. And that like having a wad of hundred dollar bills at a strip club. It goes a long ways.

They don’t get to kick themselves for too long. Shortly after the Shi’ar leave, the O5 X-men confront another group of alien visitors. This time they’re not quite as hostile and they include two hot alien women. That alone should help soften the blow. It’s the Guardians of the Galaxy, which happens to be Brian Michael Bendis’s other pet series. Coincidence? Fuck no, but at least they now have allies with which to get back at the Shi’ar. And one of them is a giant tree and the other is a raccoon with a machine gun. I would say that’s a pretty fair fight, at least from the perspective of a typical stoner.

Given the complicated premise of this arc, I would have been content if this issue didn’t make it more fucked up than it already was. I ended up being more pleasantly surprised than a fly in a shit factory by how this issue made it happen. It didn’t just throw the Shi’ar and the O5 X-men in a ring, trot out some stripper in a bikini, and let a bunch of drunks take bets on who would get knocked out first. It actually took the time to give some emotional weight to what O5 Jean was going through before the Shi’ar even arrived. I know there is a contingent of X-men fans that wishes that Jean’s only role involve continuing to feed worms. While I usually give the finger to these fans, I think even they would have to agree that this issue made it hard not to care about O5 Jean’s struggles. Those who just wanted to see the O5 X-men react to the Guardians of the Galaxy and a machine-gun toting Raccoon might be disappointed, but those who need more than just shiny pictures and homicidal animals will be satisfied with this. That’s why All New X-men #22 gets an 8 out of 10. And in addition to making me care about what happens to O5 Jean Grey, this issue also gave me the sudden urge to play all my old Run DMC songs while smoking crack. Fuck, I miss the 80s. Nuff said!

All New X-men #22 Preview - Cosmic Trial

I admit I don’t know much about laws that don’t pertain to public intoxication, public urination, and various drug laws. And several district judges and state troopers will back me up on that. But even I know that no rational court of law can convict someone for a crime they were going to commit. That would be like a state trooper arresting me on my way to the bar and giving me a DUI while I was completely sober. That’s not just patently wrong. It gives the state police in my area a terrible idea.

But that’s exactly what is about to happen with O5 Jean Grey. Marvel has been teasing it for months now. As part of their ongoing effort to let Brian Michael Bendis mix and match every one of his ongoing title while hyping up another movie, All New X-men is going to crossover with Guardians of the Galaxy. So not only will the O5 have to stop the Shi’ar for convicting Jean Grey of a crime she hasn’t even committed yet. They’ll have to do it with a hot green woman, a living tree that only knows three words, and a raccoon with a machine gun. I’m not saying that’s going to be a detriment. I just feel the need to say it out loud because it sounds like something I would only see in a bad LSD trip.

And before we can even get to the trial, the Shi’ar have to do the same thing the DEA does to pot dispensaries. They have to bust in and actually arrest O5 Jean Grey for crimes not yet committed. They also have to do this at a time when the team just got a new member in X-23 and there is still a lot of unresolved melodrama from recent events. It’s like CSI meets Jerry Springer. It may not have any strippers or crack whores, but it will have pissed off aliens and teenagers. I’m pretty sure that’s just as entertaining. And thanks to Newsarama, we have our first lettered preview to offer insight into that ongoing melodrama.

Newsarama: All New X-men #22 Lettered Preview

ALL-NEW X-MEN #22.NOW
BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W)
STUART IMMONEN (A/C)

“The Trial of Jean Grey”
The arrival of the original X-Men in the present sent shockwaves through the Marvel Universe, but we’ve only seen the effects on Earth. When alien races learn that Jean Grey, host of the destructive Phoenix Force, is back on earth, they do something about it. Now it’s up to the rest of the All-New X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to save Jean Grey from twisted intergalactic justice! Don’t miss two of Marvel’s biggest franchises crossing over for the first time!

So despite O5 Cyclops “fancying” X-23 and O5 Jean fancying pretty much every other member of the O5 X-men at this point, they still can’t stay away from each other. They’re still concerned about who they end up becoming and what they end up doing. It’s hard to believe, but it’s not something they’ve actively discussed since this series began. They’ve actually been avoiding it, which is part of why it seems so frustrating. And I can’t help but feel sorry for O5 Angel because he’s stuck in the middle of it.

I try to avoid making predictions at this point because my track record at this point is worse than the drafting of the Cleveland Browns. But this crossover event looks like it’s going to shove O5 Jean’s future right into her face to the point where she won’t be able to avoid it. And part of that future is what will happen between her and Cyclops. I’m not sure if she still has a copy of that wedding invitation he gave her earlier in the series, but that may take on the same meaning of that picture of the tombstone in Back to the Future III. It leads me to believe that Marvel will use this to retcon something in the past. I’m just too drunk to contemplate what it might be.

They could effectively One More Day the relationship between Cyclops and Jean Grey, which would be a dick move of cosmic proportions. Or they could change the way the Shi’ar handled the Phoenix Force, which would only fuck up the timeline even more. It’s impossible to say, but I predict that something is going to get retconned by the end of this crossover. Some part of Marvel’s history is going to be tweaked. It may end up tearing another asshole in the fabric of space and time, but at this point I think everyone at Marvel has stopped giving a shit about that. Nuff said!

All New X-men #22 Preview - Colors And Not Much More

I try to make every post in this blog as substantive as it is vulgar. I get that people these days have attention spans only as long as Lindsey Lohan’s latest arrest so I have to make them count. But every now and then, I can’t be too groundbreaking. I’m usually more than happy to smoke a couple joints and overlook a few details that probably won’t set anyone’s panties on fire. But with things heating up in All New X-men, namely the sexual tension between X-23 and O5 Cyclops, and the Trial of Jean Grey set to begin, I can’t be as lazy as usual. That’s painful for any stoner, but I like to think I’m more motivated than the stoners that fall asleep on Friday night and wake up Sunday because they played a Grateful Dead album on a loop.

Earlier this week, I did a post on a preview for All New X-men #22, which is the first issue of the Trial of Jean Grey. It thought it was a pretty big fucking deal, even if it was unlettered and in black and white. It left me drooling like a pervert in a panty factory, but it didn’t reveal much. Well it didn’t take long for Marvel to evoke even more drooling. Newsarama released the exact same preview. But this time, it was colored. So I guess readers can stop feeling like they’re back in the 50s and enjoy the exact same shit in all its colorful glory. I’m sorry, but there aren’t any words that could make that less underwhelming.

Newsarama: All New X-men #22 Colored Preview

“The Trial of Jean Grey”

The arrival of the original X-Men in the present sent shockwaves through the Marvel Universe, but we’ve only seen the effects on Earth. When alien races learn that Jean Grey, host of the destructive Phoenix Force, is back on earth, they do something about it. Now it’s up to the rest of the All-New X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to save Jean Grey from twisted intergalactic justice! Don’t miss two of Marvel’s biggest franchises crossing over for the first time!

I really don’t have much else to add other than this is a preview where I don’t have to take LSD to make it more colorful. So I guess my brain is grateful, but that’s really all I can say. I would love it if there was a better clue as to what O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean are yelling at each other about. For all I know, they’re yelling at O5 Angel for putting mayonnaise and ketchup on a bacon burger. I guess we won’t know until we finally get a preview with some fucking letters. Then I’ll finally know if I should be excited or hungry. Nuff said!

All New X-men #22 Unlettered Preview - More Black and White Awesome

Unlettered previews are notorious for leaving way too much to the imagination. And that’s not a good idea for anyone with an imagination as perverse and fucked up as mine. It sounds so noble on paper, letting the readers form their own conclusions. But in practice a reader’s mind is prone to form some pretty fucked up connections to the point where most will say, “Fuck it, a wizard did it.” I try to be a little more creative with my fucked up connections, but I can only do so much with the brain cells I haven’t killed.

With X-men Battle of the Atom over, Marvel has already set the stage for the next big crossover event. The Trial of Jean Grey promises to be a blowjob to those obsessed with continuity flaws. O5 Jean Grey travels to the future. Future events like the murder of 5 billion aliens comes back to bite her. It’s the clearest possible continuity anyone could possibly get without asking that a comic come with a diagram. So far, Marvel hasn’t released much detail except for a black and white preview for Guardians of the Galaxy #11. It didn’t reveal much other than some pissed off aliens plotting to get revenge on a pretty redhead. I’m pretty sure that’s the premise for a handful of pornos. But since it is a crossover and crossovers tend to soak the panties of casual fans, another black and white preview was released for All New X-men #22. I’m sure its premise is consistent with a number of pornos as well, but not quite as much.

CBR: All New X-men #22 Unlettered and Uncolored Preview

The arrival of the original X-Men in the present sent shockwaves through the Marvel Universe, but we’ve only seen the effects on Earth. When alien races learn that Jean Grey, host of the destructive Phoenix Force, is back on earth, they do something about it. Now it’s up to the rest of the All-New X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy to save Jean Grey from twisted intergalactic justice! Don’t miss two of Marvel’s biggest franchises crossing over for the first time!

Again, it’s hard to glean much from an unlettered, uncolored preview when it’s hard to tell if anyone is shitting themselves. But this one does offer a few more tantalizing details compared to the previous preview. For one, the ongoing tension between O5 Cyclops and O5 Jean apparently gets worse after the next two issues. And poor O5 Angel looks like he got involved in three-way that turned into a bar fight. I’m sure both his heart and his penis hate his guts now.

It many mean that they didn’t address the revelations in All New X-men #18 in a very mature manner. And who would expect them to? They’re fucking teenagers. Maturity is still an alien concept to them. O5 Cyclops found out that O5 Jean is now looking elsewhere to soak her loins. As a result, he started looking elsewhere and already has been shown to fancy X-23. Yet in trying to push each other away, their hearts and their genitals won’t let them. Again, they’re teenagers. It’s rarely that simple. And it appears that neither of them approve of the romantic choices they’re making. That or they’re yelling at O5 Angel for farting when he eats. It’s hard to tell, but again those are the crazy conclusions a drunken mind like mine formulates.

Beyond chaotic teenage hormones, it seems O5 Beast hasn’t given up his fondness for confounding math problems. Perhaps he’s just as curious as I am as to what the fuck is keeping the O5 from going back to their own time. That’s still an unanswered question and I’ve yet to smoke enough week to make me forget about it. Considering that this whole story is based on making O5 Jean pay for crimes she commits later on in life, it might be a good idea to figure that shit out. If not, freaky alien types are going to come after O5 Jean and it’ll only end up resembling a lot more pornos. Nuff said!