I always know that I'm enjoying a comic when I get to the end and realize that I haven't breathed in a while. Bendis takes us on a roller-coaster ride from start to finish in this issue, but he lets us enjoy the scenery along the way. Some of its good, some of its bad, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy the ride regardless.
First, we don't exactly get a full reveal when it comes to the future Brotherhood's motives, but we do get a better sense of Xavier's motives. He's driven by revenge, feeling that the present Brotherhood and X-Men squandered his father's legacy. Bendis is going to have to go into more detail here, but I'm willing to give him time to do that. Ideally, we're going to see some sort of event that really demonstrates how exactly the present Brotherhood and X-Men squandered Xavier's legacy. Xavier himself asks the Beast when it all went wrong and, if you recall from "X-Men: Battle of the Atom," the future Brotherhood firmly believed that it had to do something about the original X-Men's presence in the present before some sort of Rubicon was crossed. In other words, everything that Bendis has written so far implies that this "squandering," if you will, occurs with some sort of event. (In fact, "X-Men: Battle of the Atom" implies that we're already past it.)
The problem is that I'm not sure if we're going to see such an event, since, after all, Dazzler gets elected President. It's not like the mutants are going to wage some sort of internecine civil-war that results in New York's devastation. The mutants actually manage to pull themselves together, as we see with the universal acceptance of the future X-Men (even after Dazzler's death). What event, then, could possibly happen that leaves Xavier feeling like the present Brotherhood and X-Men squandered his father's legacy?
Moreover, we also need more when it comes to the other members of the future Brotherhood. Why do Deadpool, Ice Hulk, Molly, and "Xorn" throw in their lot with Xavier? What motivates them to wage a war with the present Brotherhood and X-Men? I get Raze's presence, but what issues to they have?
Moving onto other subjects, Bendis does a stellar job in actually explaining why the future Brotherhood has returned to the present. It uses its time-travel technology to the fullest, constantly returning to the future after its defeats and telling its future selves (the day before they left for the present) how to improve its chances this next time. This development fully embraces the time-loop nature of this story. But, it doesn't mean that the future Brotherhood is ready for everything, as Xavier learns when Jean reveals a power that he didn't know that she had, despite believing that he knew everything about her. It implies that something about the present is diverging from the future Brotherhood's future, probably due to its time travel. Does the future Brotherhood accidentally push Jean to become the Phoenix, causing the event that Xavier feels squandered his father's legacy? I could see Bendis going that way.
At any rate, Bendis gives us more about the future Brotherhood's motivations than we've previously had, but he can't stop here. We still need more, and we probably need it soon. But, I'm happy to wait to see X-23 kick the Brotherhood's ass to get it.
*** (three of five stars)
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