Wake Me When the Humans are Dead - Review Wolverine and the X-men #4

WOW!  What…a great issue.  After an exciting and exhausting opening arc, the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning decided to take it easy for some at home R and R (Recoup and Repair)…which of course never goes QUITE as smoothly as everyone hopes.  Additionally we saw the school’s brand new additions, which are all but guaranteed to shake things up (in the case of Krakoa literally).  All this and a glimpse into the future we’ve never seen!

Let’s start off with some new additions first shall we?  Well we already knew about Krakoa from last issue, but it’s nice to know that the living landmass (which is a bit more accurate than the Island That Walks Like a Man) is settling into its new surroundings so well.  You have to marvel (heh…marvel) at the writers decision to put the New X-men’s very first foe as a student at the new school.  And speaking of old foes as new students, say it with me everyone: Apocalypse!  Yeah fine, we’ll call him Evan if it makes you all feel safer but let’s be real here people.  It’s teenaged Apocalypse with no memory.  Unfortunately for him, he looks like a villain that he’s never even heard of (but everyone else has) and that basically makes him the mutant equivalent of the school Goth kid (as opposed to Kid Gladiator’s jock).  And let’s talk about Angel…  Wow.  I mean we got a brief glimpse of his condition over in X-Force, but…I mean…just Wow.  It was one thing to just bring him back to life with no memory, I was already down with that.  But this?  Healing power is reinstated…check!  New combination of skin color and wings….check (he’s never been white colored with metal wings)! Oh and he thinks he’s a real damn angel!  All this adds up to Warren Worthington III being a student once again at the school he helped build for years.  I think we can safely say that these new additions to the school will make for some very interesting stories in the months to come.

Today’s lecture by guest teacher Deathlok gave us some amazing insight into the future of the X-men. Over the years we’ve seen many different version of the “future X-men” and they always include some staples.  Old Man Wolverine.  Sorceress Storm.  Rebellion leader Cyclops.  Even evil Nightcrawler.  But this time we got a view of a whole new and different team.  We always picture the future of the X-men being led by one of the New Mutants or even Generation X, but what if the team leader in the future was Omega? Or Gladiator?  Or how Ironic would it be if the next brilliant Beast character to head the science squad was alien mutant Brood, one of the X-men’s deadliest foe, Broo?  And I’m sorry but was that a Phoenix emblem I saw on Quentin Quire’s uniform?  Screw Hope Summers, what if Quire was the Phoenix host of the future?  And of course, what incarnation of the X-men would be complete without an Apocalypse of their very own to fight?  Unfortunately this time Apocalypse will take on the form of a dear friend and team mate.  I think this most recent look into the future of the X-men was one of the more insightful and creative takes on the future team we have seen in a very long time.  Bravo!  Now let’s just see if any of it ever happens…I mean Sam Guthrie and Dani Moonstar are full-fledged X-men now so why couldn’t they be?!

This title just keeps getting better and better.  It’s so wonderful to see the heroes that we have known for years acting as mentors and teachers rather than super heroes.  Even Iceman, who is historically THE wisecracker and joker of the entire X-men structure, has taken on no small measure of responsibility as not just as a teacher but as the caretaker of one of his oldest friends.  I definitely got a huge laugh at Husk (who I didn’t even recognize under that hood until my second read through) still being all crispy and healing during the faculty staff meeting.  These new sides of our old favorites, as well as the new students of this increasingly more exciting and populated school, tell me that we are in for quite a semester at the JG School for Higher Learning.  Oh and did I forget to mention Kitty Pryde is pregnant with god know what?  Yeah...that happened too.

An Island Getaway - Review Wolverine & the X-men #2

Its official!  This new title and its KILLER creative team have won me over!  I really was dead set against this series as there just didn’t seem to be a need for it.  With the swarm of X-books out there right now I felt like Wolverine’s new school could have appropriated one of them and made it their new home (like Legacy or Astonishing).  After a wonderful first issue, the Grey School student body kicked the action into high gear, and with so much going on they even still found time to develop some of the newer characters as well as some older ones too.

First the character development side.  It’s about time that someone laid into Bobby “Frosty” Drake and told him to grow up.  Now maybe that’s not exactly what Logan said to Bobby in the ruins of the former Xavier Institute for Higher Learning but the was the jist of it.  As one of the original X-men, Iceman has a responsibility to set the bar for excellence as high as he can, but for years he’s just joked his way through one situation to the next.  He didn’t even feel the need to develop his powers to their fullest until Emma Frost did it first when she took over his body in Uncanny X-men #314.  It took her giving an embarrassingly powerful display of HIS power for him to even try.  Wolverine and Iceman’s conversation left me thinking that we should watch for him to do great things at this new school and then the army of frosted dupes (each controlled by Bobby) appeared…Multiple Iceman? Jaime Madrox is going to be furious.  And how about Oya and Broo?  LOVE IT!  It’s wonderful that a girl as jaded as Idie is can still find an attraction in one of the ugliest forms of alien that we know of in the Marvel Universe.  And it was hilarious to watch Broo (who, it hadn’t even occurred to me, we hadn’t even heard his name outloud until she said it) verbalize his thoughts as he logic-ed his way through the parts of “a crush” as he felt them and really showed that despite being a mutant Brood, there is still some residual Brood in him.  I see this being a brand new Angel and Beak scenario…you know…minus the creepy mutant bird/fly babies and trashy hut to raise them in.  If the writers can keep the emotions churning and development coming then this book will be a smash hit!

                Now the action!  They were NOT kidding with this battle!  I guess I understand they want to really grab people’s attention but DAMN.  We were given fair notice that a classic villain was going to return so I was already prepared for some sort of “wow” moment.  Then Sauron and Wendigo showed up (if you can consider state examiners mutating into them “showing up”).  I was already a little floored, as far as classic villains go they were pretty good.  Neither character gets used very often and used well even less so I was happy with the villains guest stars…and then an army of Frankenstein’s monsters appeared from inside bullets!  Ok, not really an X-men villain but definitely classic (maybe they didn’t mean a classic X-men villain specifically I thought)…and then…KRAKOA showed up.  KRAKOA??  Ok you just don’t get any more classic then Krakoa.  I mean the Island Who Walks Like a Man is basically one step down from Magneto when you consider milestone villains, and talk about out of left field.  I t was amazing!  It was a great touch for them to keep with the Deadly Genesis version of things, and not have the living biomass talk too.  Meanwhile, all the way up on a nice safe hilltop is the Hellfire Brats.  I’m really torn on them at this point.  They’ve seemed really cool up until now but they are always starting to sounds cheesy and corny with their constant “evil chatter”, for example it was funny the first time the blond girl (whose name I cannot remember for the life of me, and it isn’t mentioned in the issue) talked cutely about hitting penguins with a hammer and then it got old.  I would hate to see this new Hellfire Club go the way of the Upstarts, cool as hell right off the bat and then quickly becomes tired and lame.

                As I already admitted, I am totally sold on this title now.  All thoughts of oversaturation from X-books are gone (not that we aren’t oversaturated but I don’t mind it is what I mean) and I can’t wait until next issue.  I mean, we don’t exactly have Cyclops, Havok and Polaris to send Krakoa into space this time do we?  I am expecting a gorgeous combining of powers to whack this weed and get the school finally opened.  If I had to have one complaint it would be that we didn’t see enough Rachel or Paige, but I suspect they are going to have bigger roles over in Legacy once that title joins ReGenesis next week.  And what about the examiners??  Or am I the only one that noticed they disappeared after transforming and weren’t seen again?  Hmmm, that’ll look bad on the report…