Week of February 24, 2016:
In which All-New X-Men is full of feelings.
Reviewed:
- *All-New X-Men #5
*Pick of the Week
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Jay, be honest, did you wear a (I’m assuming Speed Racer?) hoodie with a #5 on it to intentionally coincide with the issue number of All-New X-Men?
No. I wore a Speed Racer hoodie with a #5 on it because Speed Racer is awesome and it’s one of the most comfortable garments I own.
I did enjoy ANXM. I didn’t relate to any of it, which might be why I enjoyed it. I like stories that explore experiences that differ from the ones I’ve had in my life.
While I suspect the Bobby/Evan scene is the one that most people will pay attention to – and it was a good scene – I much preferred Idie’s scene. Her wrestling with her faith was wonderfully-written. I have been unimpressed with how Idie’s been written over the past few years, under Aaron and then Latour, but I thoroughly approve of how Hopeless wrote her here.
This was actually one of my favourite issues of the series yet – I’ve loved all the other ones, and I get the idea that maybe as a whole the issue may not have come together so great but I’m a rather big fan of individual moments, and I felt this issue gave a lot of the characters some pretty strong ones. As someone who grew up Christian, Idie’s scene resonated with me especially strongly – and it’s interesting that it came out the same week as Spider-Man 2099 #7(I think it’s seven, I could be wrong) which also has faith criticisms brought up.
It’s not often these days that you see an entire issue (not to mention two in a row) using a single super-villain as an antagonist, especially a classic one like the Blob. I appreciate seeing them used as characters with individual personalities and powers rather than interchangeable members of teams or crowd scene fillers.
I did see someone point out how weird it is that, after Iceman comes crashing through the church wall, Idie finishes yelling at god before actually helping out. And also how weird it is that Bobby and Evan didn’t hear Blob crashing around before they saw him.
Both amusing observations, though I still think they’re great scenes in a solid comic.
Y’know, I can totally see you comparing the issues of the week to the last meal you’v ate each week, and see which one of those was better. Taking the podcast towards a culinary/comics related road. Like a competition. It will be called: Food VS X-Men!
what purpose do angel’s flaming wings serve? do they have any additional properties like healing or something? i started black vortex and then never finished it. i just recall after they came back to all new xmen vol 1, he had flaming wings and laura had colorful streaks in her hair.
Rule of cool. Continuity-wise, they’re left over from the Black Vortex.
Honestly I took a little bit of an issue with the Wolverine side plot, when I read this comic; just because stereotypically self harm and suicide tend to be linked together in culture even though they are typically two very different issues. Self harm is a form of mutilation, while suicide is deliberately taking one’s life. While someone can be struggling with both self harm/injury and be suicidal, they are not usually indicative of one another.
Usually I really like how self harm is handled in Laura’s previous stories, where in Marjorie Liu’s and Kyle/Yost’s writing it’s shown as a maladaptive coping mechanism to stress and emotion. Even when Laura is shown to be suicidal in Liu’s X-23 solo series, it’s treated as a separate issue from her self harm.
How it’s handled in this story just makes me a little uneasy, because self harm is oftentimes confused with suicidal behavior, and that myth can make it difficult to address the pain that people who self harm are going through, because there is the assumption that they have the same needs as someone who is suicidal.