Wolverine and the X-Men #37
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Andrew Currie, and Matt Milla
The short of it:
Xean takes Uncanny Cyclops to the White Room to screw with his head while her team makes their escape. Scott, his team, and the X-Men of the future try to regroup and go after them, but are quickly stopped by Wolverine and his X-Women of the present (and Wiccan) who want answers. Like that these are the X-Men of the future, that Xean and company are the Brotherhood, and Wolverine is ready to do what has to be done to get things back to normal. Thing is, they can’t, and the Future X-Men finally let things start to slip…like how the original five are stuck in the present. All that matters now is finding the Brotherhood, along with those time lost X-Men, before they can do…well, whatever they’re going to do. The X-Men don’t know.
The readers, however, know. Plan B does not involve killing the All-New X-Men, but it does have the Brotherhood go to an old school X location…Cape Citadel, which triggers alerts to SHIELD. Back with the X-Men, Quentin Quire meets his future self and asks the wrong question, Scott and Logan argue but then provide a reminder that they are very much on the same page, and two teleporting Russians siblings cut down on travel time. Phoenix lets the X-Kids free, and we get an all out brawl with oh-so-many X-Variants. We get an answer for what IceHulk is, find out which future Xer is an X-Offspring, have another Rasputin family moment, and it’s good triumphing over evil time! Until SHIELD shows up, obviously, because they have to screw things up. It’s in their contract. They prepare to launch tear gas, but something happens and…
Plan B is kinda explosive.
What I liked:
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Wolverine processes that in the future he has a son with Mystique that goes back in time just to get a chance to gut him. He mixes this with the knowledge that Daken was a thing, and his own record with women, and he comes to a conclusion. He’s never having sex again. Probably for the best!
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I’ve loved all of the Rasputin family moments. Piotr really does grow up to be awesome.
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Quentin and Quentin. I’ve been waiting since the moment they showed off Quentin Quire as the Phoenix for him to meet his younger self, and Jason Aaron did not disappoint. He gives himself one question, and Kid Omega totally asks the wrong one. When does he get out? Hilarious. It’s the X-Men, kid, nobody gets out!
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All the leaks of future knowledge! With the characters trying so hard at first for nobody to find anything out, it’s great how much they blurt out here. Gandalf the Cold telling his younger selves what IceHulk is, two Hank’s debating sanity with their elder, and Wolverine versus his son while Storm finds out…she has a daughter?
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Angry Maria Hill amuses me greatly, I just always plug in Cobie Smulders voice and picture her as really angry Robin from How I Met Your Mother, and the character has found a brand new life for me.
What I didn’t like:
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Kitty making cracks about how nobody trust Yana. It’s like writers have forgotten that the two were like sisters, there can be anger and resentment, but there shouldn’t be straight up hate.
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Xean is getting too plot devicey. She can do whatever she needs to, whenever she needs to, and yes, Jean was always pretty overpowered too, but she also knew how to job.
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Man, what is it with these future Brotherhood idiots and thinking mutants will hate the humans when the attacks on them…are not the fault of the humans. Like the demons in their future, or how this SHIELD attack is obviously the fault of Future Jean.
Final thoughts:
Things that did not surprise me! Kymera? The future X-Man who looks just like Storm? Storm’s kid. Things they don’t say that I’m going to assume (based on her heightened senses and feud with Raze)? Wolverine is her dad.
How powerful is Xean? She can control IceHulk, which has no actual mind.
How do you cope with Wolverine not having a healing factor? Employ plot devices to disguise the fact, like having a magical healer around so you can still gut Wolverine without him kicking the bucket.
Ha, future Xavier got put in a chair. Most fortunate injury ever, really, since Colossus impaled him on a blade that was bigger than he is.
Power neutralizers that don’t stop Jean from reading minds? What’s the point?
Is Dazzler still Mystique?
The art isn’t really all over the place, and it should be brought up in the things I liked section, but the more I look at it the closer it moves to middle of the road. By no means do I hate it, but sometimes it’s active and lively and jumping off the page, and other times it’s flat and boring, and sometimes the faces are just really creepy or goofy looking. Total mixed bag.
That said, in the double paged spread of all people X fighting, Future Xavier looks a bit racist.
Big finish is next week! Can’t wait!
Overall: 7.5/10
