Battle of the Atom Review: X-Men #6 by Brian Wood and David Lopez

Reviews, Top Story

X-Men-6-cover

X-Men #6

Written by Brian Wood

Art by David Lopez, Cam Smith, Terry Pallot, Laura Martin, and Matt Milla

 

The short of it:

Jubilee wakes up to crying, so much never ending crying, and she has to wonder why her babysitters are failing so hard. Well, it’s because they dumped her baby off with Broo who is scaring the crap out of Shogo. I mean, he’s awful with kids. Bling and Armor aren’t, and they give Jubes a pendant for Shogo to keep him safe because he’s apparently going to be in danger a lot. Speaking of danger, the jets are incoming and Rachel wants them to get Young Beast and Young Iceman ready to go…can’t do that, they’re in the FUTURE! So Logan and Rachel mind talk and he, being Logan, trusts nobody and knows these future X-Men are up to something. They all get back and find out that the two went to the future, so Future Xavier assaults Bling’s brain for information, then talks some smack, and then before Rachel can really warn anybody Wolverine gets stabbed by the mutant pretending to be Future Kitty.

With their cover blown, Xavier lets Xean know and she whammies everyone unconcious with her mind powers. Jubilee hands off her kid and goes full Vamp on Xavier, Rogue finds out she can’t power zap IceHulk, but Betsy smashes him into tiny pieces. Rachel goes to war on the Astral Plane with Future Xavier, but that means nothing when Molly Hayes can punch her when she’s otherwise occupied, and Deadpool declares his love for Psylocke. Shogo gets a new toy to bounce around, and it’s kinda lame.

But really, the Future X-Men turn the school into stronghold to defend against the Real Future X-Men, who show up with the Uncanny X-Men.

And the identity of Sentinel-X is revealed!

 

What I liked:

  • Vampire Jubilee finally debuts! I mean, this is the first time she’s gone after someone fangs first since this book launched.

  • Wolverine’s lack of a healing factor comes in to play, good, it should be there and there is no excuse for this event to happen before he loses his most critically important power.

  • David Lopez and company did a nice job with the art. Rachel and Logan look great, the action flows nicely, the brief astral plane fight is great looking, and yeah, there are some very underrated artists on this book who definitely deserve a place at the X table.

  • Psylocke is treated like a capable badass, as she should be. She is a crazy awesome super ninja, after all, there is never an excuse for her to job.

  • The bouncing baby in the bubble amused me, I won’t lie.

 

What I didn’t like:

  • The dialog is just…really wonky this issue. The bad guys turn in generic bad guy dialog, there are a ton of cliches, and the proclamations…so many proclamations. Betsy has a moment where she beats someone down while holding a baby and her ‘I am awesome’ line is just…awful.

  • When did Hisako learn how to make miniature forcefield generators? Did Bling help? When did Bling learn how to make miniature forcefield generators?

  • The X-Men are borderline incompetent. Young Evil Future Xavier is borderline mind raping one of their students right in front of them, and all they offer are harsh words.

  • Wolverine gets attacked in front of Rachel, Rogue, Jubilee, and Psylocke. They’re all too shocked to do anything? Really? REALLY?!?!

  • I feel like, with the destruction of IceHulk, that we may never get a proper explanation for how that worked.

 

Final thoughts:

Two issues ago we saw Jubilee’s legs and they were covered in awful tattoo sleeves, this issue we see them again and there are no tats. Instant improvement.

Iron X-Man is so much cooler than Sentinel-X.

If IceHulk is empty, which member of the team is controlling him?

Well, we finally got the payoff that makes Shogo worth bringing up during the event. At least they gave us that.

So, ummmm, just a thought, but wouldn’t it help if they showed us the goals of the evil future X-Men? Like, what are they going to achieve by forcing their past selves to go back in time? Vaguest motivations ever, even their ‘the humans will never accept us’ bit from last issue required you to ignore the amount of humans to have died in the same attack.

Jubilee has some really durable sunglasses.

So is Future Xavier actually Xavier? Like one of those evil alternate reality ones that always seems to pop up in multiversal X-Books like Exiles and Xtreme X-Men? Wait, what if they’re timeline is overly fucked because they didn’t just stay in the present, but went and brought Xavier with them thus completely obliterating all time that came before them!

Is Wolverine incapable of having kids that aren’t evil?

Man, for as annoying as Shogo was/is/will continue to be, if he can last past Wood’s tenure and become a part of the ongoing mythos, then major kudos. Most babies in the X-Universe don’t last long.

Overall: 6.5/10

A lifelong reader and self proclaimed continuity guru, Grey is the Editor in Chief of Comics Nexus. Known for his love of Booster Gold, Spider-Girl (the real one), Stephanie Brown, and The Boys. Don't miss The Gold Standard.