Cyclops Prepares for a Mutant Revolution in All-New X-Men #3

Marvel Comics
Story – Brian Michael Bendis
Art – Stuart Immonen

As someone who never read an X-Men title with any consistency, and as someone who always felt at a loss where to jump into this world, I am thrilled that Marvel Now! has given us newbies All-New X-Men. In this third installment of the new series, Brian Michael Bendis is in complete control of this story, and based on the perfect pace and terrific plotting and dialogue, my hopes for this book are now astronomical. The first two issues were predominantly set-up; filling in readers about Cyclops’s budding revolution with Magneto, the death of Professor X, the Phoenix Force, and Beast’s time-bending retrieval of the original X-Men from the distant past. This issue is where I feel we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty, the implications and consequences of the remarkable set-up of the first two issues.

This book is positively cinematic. The dialogue is snappy and believable and drives the story forward effectively. The characters are lush, fully-realized, and fascinating. The art is gorgeous and lucid, and the action scenes are stunning. It’s a bit disorienting to see Cyclops and Magneto on the same team, and even stranger when Magneto asks Cyclops, “What do we do now?” That’s not really a question I’d expect from Magneto, but it just goes to show how high Cyclops’s star has risen in the mutant revolution, whether you find it a just cause or not.

10 Things to be Learned from Marvel Comics’ February Solicitations

The February Solicitations for Marvel Comics have been released and we can now get a good feel of what Marvel Now! will be bringing to the table. Just from this month’s selection alone, it looks like Marvel Now! will be anything but expected.

1. Marvel Movie Invasion. The new Secret Avengers book will be led by the likes of Nick Fury Jr. and Agent Phil Coulson. Who is Nick Fury Jr? Well he’s Nick Fury’s secret son who strangely looks like Ultimate Nick Fury and Samuel L. Jackson. Then he loses an eye and looks exactly like Nick Fury. So the movie Fury is now the main Marvel Fury and Agent Coulson is here too. It’s pretty obvious that Marvel is pushing their movie properties into their comic books, but are they pushing a little too hard?

There is also the Avengers Assemble book, which chronicles the adventures of the movie Avengers. The book is supposed to be set in continuity, but there is really no telling how. Whether this book takes place in the past, with some other Avengers team with this lineup or completely outside of continuity, this book’s main focus is advertising the Avengers in the movie. I suppose that’s the exact point. Take Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye and throw them into the Marvel Comics Universe filled with all the heroes and villains they could want.

Why Mark Millar Spells Doom For Fox-Marvel

Mark Millar was just recently announced to be 20th Century Fox’s “creative consultant” for their line of Marvel movies. I couldn’t imagine a worse person to choose.

Let’s get this out of the way, okay? I don’t like Mark Millar’s body of work. It tends to be crass, juvenile, demented, adolescent wish-fulfillment where everyone curses like a sailor, people explode into buckets of blood and gore when they die (and boy do a lot of people die in Millar’s stories), and everyone but the main character is a warped misogynist. Kick-Ass 2 is especially guilty of this, where the villain of the story, known, sigh, as The Mother-Fucker, shoots a bunch of children for no real reason and then rapes the protagonist’s girlfriend, all to show how evil and sick he is. Really, Millar? That’s the extent of your imagination? Don’t get me started on Nemesis, where the villain kidnaps the hero’s daughter and son, impregnates the daughter with the son’s sperm, and then rigs the daughter’s uterus to collapse if they attempt an abortion. These are actual words that Mark Millar actually wrote down that were actually published.

Bryan Singer returns to X-Men

It has been announced that Bryan Singer will direct the sequel to 2011’s X-Men: First Class. It was previously believed that Matthew Vaughn would return as director of the new X-Men movie franchise, however he has since backed out. Vaughn will most likely be a producer for the movie set for a 2014 release.

Singer had previously directed X-Men and its sequel X-2: X-Men United before famously abandoning the franchise, along with James Marsden (Cyclops), to work on Superman Returns. We all know what happened next. X-Men: The Last Stand was a mess and the return of Superman was met with a unanimous yawn.

X-Men: Days of Future Past will presumably be based on the 1981 story, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, about a dystopian future where Mutants have not only been outlawed, but were placed into internment camps. The story revolves around the present day X-Men trying to prevent the events that would lead to such a disastrous future. The storyline is widely considered one of the best X-Men stories ever written.

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In the meantime, X-Men mainstay Wolverine will be starring in The Wolverine, which will be in theaters July 26 2013. Hugh Jackson will be returning for his 5th go around as the clawed mutant and will also be producing the movie. Darren Aronofsky was originally attached to direct, but left after several delays. He was replaced by James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted, 3:10 to Yuma).

The Wolverine is a sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but will take place after the original three X-Men movies. Based on the 1982 comic from Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, Wolverine travels to Japan to confront figures from his mysterious past.