Captain Marvel #16, by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Jen van Meter (writers), Patrick Olliffe (penciler), Drew Geraci w/Tom Nguyen (inkers), Andy Troy (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - As amused as I am by Hawkeye having to hold on to his recent ex-girlfriend for dear life in the escape, the Avengers really ought to consider making rocket packs a standard part of their outer space gear. For non-flyers anyway. If Stark can afford to build 5 million variant armors for himself, he can take five minutes away from his stupid Illuminati crap to make propulsion systems for his teammates.Proximity to a black hole has caused Carol's Binary powers to kick in. I thought she needed a white hole - where she could draw energy from a nearby nascent universe - for that, but OK. It's still not enough, as she and all the allies she was trying to rescue are captured. When she wakes up, she's brought to the bridge because the Builders want to know why a bunch of people I don't know are hanging out with Earthlings. This line of inquiry is interrupted by Star-Lord's dad trying to bargain for the life of his empire by selling out Earth. I liked Star-Lord a lot better when his dad was dead as far as I knew. Thanks, Bendis.
That largely pointless scene over, Carol's returned to the holding cell where she tells the others they're going to break out, rescue their friends, then blow up the ship and the surrounding area while they're still on it. Given Carol doesn't disagree with Hawkeye's observation that it's a suicide mission, one wonders why they'd bother rescuing anyone. So they can be conscious when they're blown to bits? Carol's also completely OK with killing anyone else who may be on the ship, 'cause it's war. Wish you'd had that attitude when you had the chance to off Norman Osborn back during Dark Reign, Carol. It's all irrelevant because a) a rescue team of Avengers arrived, and b) the Builders are all gone. So they rescue their allies, and blow up stuff while they safely jump away/stand within a protective barrier. Something like that.
At least that's over. Kind of a mess, frankly. It's hard for me to tell if Carol's so calm because she has experience in military intelligence and knows the value of keeping your cool and listening, or because she's so disconnected she doesn't care much. The dual inking team is doing Olliffe any favors, either. Sometimes it feels like they're overdoing it, too many shadows, making characters too jagged, and other times it goes the other way and the lines look too thin and the characters look wobbly. Let's just move on.
X-Men #5, by Brian Wood (writer), David Lopez (penciler), Cam Smith (inker), Laura Martin (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Oh boy, it's two of my least favorite X-Men on the cover! That's certainly encouraging!All right, Battle for the Atom. X-Men from the future show up to tell the X-Men in the present that the X-Men from the past need to go back when they came from, but some of them (Scott and Jean) don't want to go. So they run, and the Future X-Men and a group of present X-Men give chase. But Rachel and Kitty aren't totally cool with forcing the kids to return to their own time against their will (as Rachel notes, she came here from the future and stuck around, so it'd be pretty hypocritical of her if she did), so they decide to follow and help Young Scott and Jean escape, and the two of them contacted present Cyclops' team for help. Oh, goody. I really hope his role is done by the time the story reached issue 6. I don't need a book with two Cyclopses in it, unless they're dying.
When I was watching X-Men Evolution the whole way through last fall, I noticed the X-Men's standard response on meeting a new mutant seemed to be, "Tackle them!" Which never produced very good results, certainly not when it came to trust. The group that chased Scott and Jean were working from the same playbook. I don't know why they think hemming someone in and then advancing on them won't be seen as threatening just because they say they want to talk. Also, the present X-Men seem to be bickering almost a comical amount. I don't know if that's the stress of the situation causing tensions to flare, or if it's significant (mental tampering?)It certainly seems significant that in the bickering on the beach, the background for Kitty's panels is this bright red and she seems really angry with Storm and Wolverine, especially Wolverine, who didn't even do much of anything. Is that the problem, she thought he should have stepped in to calm things down? Also, that red is about the same hue as the one Martin uses for the shots inside the new Blackbird, er, the Dove, and for the panel where Young Scott optic blasts Present Beast. In the interior cockpit shots, either Future Xavier or Future Jean is always in the panel, so hmm, two mysterious telepaths, and everyone is acting really aggressive.
David Lopez is still the artist, which is quite all right with me. There was one panel of Jubilee smiling I think he was supposed to draw fangs more prominently, based on her smile and her comment about learning to adapt, but that's as far as the gripes go, since he's isn't responsible for Present of Future Beast's stupid designs. I'm not sure about the new Blackbird design being the one from the '90s cartoon, but I wasn't clear on why their other Blackbird went back to the old SR-71 design. Not that I was complaining about that; I love the SR-71. I do like the Hummingbird design, the little aircar, Rachel let Scott and Jean steal, and Lopez managed to make Cyclops look cool while he was zooming around on the motorcycle. Very Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, not a comparison I'd ever expect to make for Cyclops.
I actually enjoyed this, to my surprise. I'm still not excited about the prospect of multiple Cyclopses, but I like bringing back the argument that was sort of there in AvX, the many versus the few. Cyke was totally OK with using the Phoenix to make people mutants, whether they wanted to be or not, because he thought the needs to the mutant race were more important than those individuals' rights. We'll see if he takes the same stance now that it's a question of sending two individuals, including his past self, back to a life they don't want, to preserve a lot of people's future. I kind of hope he switches gears, just so I can call him a big honking hypocritical jackass. That aside, I like that Kitty and Rachel are on the same wavelength, since they've been close friends for a long time, and I was worried when Storm seemed to imply the whole rest of the team agreed with here about the Arkea situation, and Rachel was the lone dissenter. I at least wanted to see why Kitty disagreed with her friend, especially since she wasn't even there at the time. And like I said, David Lopez is a really good artist, so It's nice to read books he draws.
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