All New X-men Volume 1: Yesterday's X-men
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Spoilers to follow:
This series follows shortly sometime after the events of AvX. Basically for those who don't know by know, in AvX, Cylcops and his band were possessed by the Phoenix Force. In the end Cyclops possessed by the Phoenix kills his mentor Charles Xavier.
Now for the story contained in the tpb. New Mutants are starting to pop up again and Cyclops's team is recruiting them. Naturally this causes some media attention. Wolverine's group of X-men are none to happy with this outcome. Iceman makes the comment if only young Scott could see himself now. Well this gets Beast thinking. Beast travels back in time and convinces the original group to come to the present with him. Anyways the time travel and his ongoing mutation causes Beast to fall into a coma. The young X-men are shocked by what their future will become and leave the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning in search of Cyclops. In the end the current Cyclops sees his younger self and the love of his life still alive. As you've guessed this has an impact but not enough for him to quit his mission. The young X-men return to the Jean Grey School and save Beast who ends up having another mutation. They all decide to stay in the present because returning to the past would just result in having their minds wiped by Prof. X causing them to not remember anything therefore they would still have the same fates. They decide to stay in the present and try to fix things. Kitty Pride agrees to help mentor them.
Ok as most of Bendis's writings this is mostly dialogue. There's also a lot going on here and the focus shifts, a lot. Obviously the main focus in the X-men from the past. However we see a lot of Cyclops recruiting new mutants for his school which is an abandoned Weapon X facility.
My favorite part was the art.
Some things I also liked were a few of the interactions with the past and present X-men. The Icemen tend to poke at eachother. It's kinda humorous but also makes Bobby look like a childish idiot. Also the young X-men really aren't happy with anything in the future and really don't take any flack off of anyone, especially Wolverine. That was kind of interesting, Wolverine was really made to look like a bully in this and basically got what he deserved with these past X-men basicially ignoring him.
It's late so I will post some more later. I have more thoughts on this. I'll close with it's a decent read but I didn't love it. I honestly am not compelled to read any further volumes. Not saying I might never read another installment but at the moment don't feel compelled to. No one is really likeable in this either. With the exception of young Scott and young Warren. However Warren really doesn't do anything. Young Scott doesn't do much but you feel bad for him because everyone basically hates him for something he hasn't done yet. In the end Jean gives him the cold shoulder which as kind of out of the blue.
Replies
Just read issue 1. Enjoyable opener. Bendis borrowed from X-Men 8 at the end, and captured the spirit of the original team fairly well. Immonen's art was great. So far so good.