This is the true story of five X-Men picked to come to the present and have their lives scripted to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World...Xavier's Mansion!
The opening narration of the "Real World" came to me while reading this issue because we see exactly what it describes here: people stop being polite and start getting real. Everyone is trying to treat the original five X-Men with kid gloves, but it's clear that they're going to be able to do so for only so long. Jean wrecks Kitty's room (where she's staying) with her telekinesis during a violent dream and is then overwhelmed when her telepathy gives her an inside look into the thoughts of everyone in the Mansion. Kitty teaches Jean to block out the voices, something that she ironically learned to do from older Jean. In doing so, the two bond and Jean begins to ask tentative questions about her relationship with other X-Men. But, even this effort is complicated since, when Kitty says that she admired older Jean, original Jean's telepathy allows her to discover that Kitty wasn't quite as admiring of Jean as she claimed. (On this score, I have to give Bendis huge ups for actually treating older Jean as a real person and not as a martyred saint. She could be difficult! Who knew?)
Moreover, Scott steals Logan's motorcycle and heads to town, causing him to discover the joys of cellular phones and bottled water. I thought Bendis did a good job with their conversation outside the convenience store, with Logan showing some capacity to understand that Scott is going through a difficult time. However, I particularly loved Scott's reaction, knocking back Wolverine with his optic blast and then leaving again. I honestly didn't see that coming and I think that it's the moment where I realized that the X-Men have already started to lose their control over the kids and, as we see with Mystique observing the image of a teenage Scott, the world has started to notice. Moreover, we don't really know what Scott wants. It seems like he may be going to see his older self, his desire for answers driver by his fury over waking up one day in the present and finding himself isolated from his friends for a crime that he didn't commit. But, who better to sway original Scott to the dark side than present Scott? Again, Bendis is making it clear that the kids' learning period has come to a close and their actions are going to begin to have pretty serious consequences.
Along those lines, Bendis also shows that the status quo that existed in the original X-Men's team dynamics are in flux. Jean has emerged, somewhat to her own surprise, as the leader of the team, as Bendis hinted would happen last issue. Warren feels increasingly isolated from his friends over his anger at having been overruled, a sense of betrayal that probably isn't going to be helped when he discovers what happens to him in the future. Moreover, I was reminded during this issue the rude awakening these kids are going to have. Beyond Warren's obviously traumatic future, I realized that Jean is going to discover at some point that her entire family has been murdered. I mean, it's probably going to be weird for original Bobby to have Kitty as his headmistress now that he knows that he's going to be dating her in the future. It's a lot to process and it seems clear this issue that they're not all going to do so well at it.
This series continues to keep building and building steam. My only negative this issue was actually Marquez. In two separate instances, he splashed the panels across two pages in a way that wasn't entirely obvious that he had done so, resulting in me reading them page-by-page, realizing I read them in the the wrong order, and then having to re-read them left to right. I like interesting panel designs, but they shouldn't get in the way of the story, as they do here. Overall, though, it's a pretty minor complaint. I'm still a really happy camper with this series.
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