Age of X-Man Omega #1: Like many events, this one ends without any real consequences. The problem with that resolution is Thompson came close to making it interesting at the end here.
As the X-Men confront X-Man, they discover that they will functionally murder everyone born in this world to return to their world. As some of the X-Men push to do so, X-Man wryly notes how mad they were in their world when someone made life and death decisions for them but how easily they're willing to make them for everyone else here. Nevertheless, Nate tells the X-Men that they just have to plunge the Life Seed into his chest and they can return home. Just as Magneto seems ready to do that, suddenly we have another options. The X-Men are simply sent home through Nate.
Thompson even then seemed to be going somewhere interesting, as people like Colossus and Nature Girl express the desire to stay. But, Nate insists that everyone has to go, without explaining why. In fact, he later breaks that rule when he somehow splits Magneto into two, allowing one version of him to return and another version of him to stay in this world where his dreams were realized. In the end, it's simply done. At some point, Thompson quickly explains Dani's presence in both this world and in the "real" world as happening because a part of Dani will always living inside Nate.
But, again, before we can really explore that idea, we move onto the next issue at hand that Thompson has to resolve. If you thought this experience would've made Nate realize relationships have value, you'd be wrong. In fact, Thompson really sidesteps that issue entirely. Nate and Magneto decide to reinvent this world without the secret police or the relationship ban, but it means we never really learn why Nate decided he needed those things in the first place. Nate is basically accusing the X-Men of denying themselves Utopia, but he never acknowledges that a Utopia with brainwashing and secret police probably isn't one, as this experience shows. After all, it isn't like the secret police were just there to make sure the X-Men didn't remember their pasts; the pregnant woman who bore a child in the "X-Tremists" mini-series pretty clearly wasn't someone from "our" world.
In other words, this event was clearly conceived as a placeholder to give Hickman time to build his world, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it. I'm just sad I spent so much money on it.
Batman #75: [Sigh.] I don't even know what to say here, to be honest. King leaps about 30 steps at the start of this issue when it begins simply with the word, "Later..." Honestly, I'm fine with that, if only because I hate this run and can't wait for it to end. You know you're in a bad place when the people who love this run will be disappointed that we won't see the outcome of Bruce and Thomas' fight in the desert while the people who hate this run will be thrilled just to be closer to the end.
Anyway, all we know is that Thomas is now the Batman of Gotham and Bruce is wandering some snow-laden, wind-swept mountain looking for yet another guru. All the villains in Gotham as well as Gotham Girl and Thomas are working for Bane, with most if not all of them under Psycho-Pirate's influence. King tries to make this development interesting by leaning into the ridiculousness, such as making Joker and Riddler detectives working a beat. They're tracking down villains, like Two-Face here, who resist Bane's rule. When they find them, the rebels are subject to Psycho-Pirate's ministrations.
Meanwhile, Bruce is looking for the aforementioned guru. I mean, seriously, does he have a guru on every mountaintop? The "guru" turns out being some kid who easily slices his neck; the kid and his friend strip Bruce to his underwear and bolt. (They're working for someone apparently connected to Bane, but I don't care enough to re-read that part.) Catwoman appears from nowhere to save him, with no explanation for why she's there. But, Batman can also be almost murdered by small children now, so why do we need explanations?
Even giving King the mulligan on the time jump, he leaves all sorts of questions unanswered and seems unlikely to answer them. We learn that Gotham Girl is somehow keeping all of Bruce's "fancy friends" (to use Thomas' term for them) from entering Gotham, and it seems preposterous that the Justice League would be so afraid of Claire (or protective of Alfred, as Thomas alleges) that they'd just give up Gotham. Moreover, as a forced-seeming part of the "Year of the Villains" event, Bane asks Luthor to arrange for the U.S. government to surrender Gotham to him. Along with Hugo Strange's presence as the commissioner, this development makes it feel like King had no ideas left but replayed "Arkham City" a few too many times.
At some point, Thomas asserts Bruce is "broken," but, honestly, I don't know why. He seemed fine in the desert. He's certainly faced more difficult circumstances, and I don't understand why he's searching for a guru when he could just go to one of his safehouses, have the Bat-family meet him there, and mount an attack on Bane. Whatever. I'm done. I just can't do it anymore.
Transformers #9: I wanted to love this series, but I'm done now. (Man, it's a bad week for comics.) It's just too effing slow. Ruckley is definitely building to something, but we seem many, many issues away from learning what it is, and I don't have the patience for that right now.
Uncanny X-Men #22: This series wasn't perfect, but it's still one of the most solid runs on the X-Men since Lemire's short-lived "Extraordinary X-Men." The X-Men are always at their best with their backs against the wall, and Rosenberg continued to deliver realistic challenges and setbacks for the X-Men as we progressed through the series.
By the time the rest of the X-Men return, it's really just Scott and Logan facing down the Sentinels with Dr. Nemesis, Emma, Hope, Moonstar, and Mystique on the sidelines. In this issue alone, Fabian Cortez, Havok, and Multiple Man die. Of course, Hickman's imminent arrival on the scene has made it pretty clear that these deaths are temporary. After all, the relaunched "New Mutants" series has Chamber, Magik, Sunspot, and Wolfsbane, and they're all dead or missing at this point.
But, Rosenberg wisely keeps the focus on that proverbial wall, as the X-Men decide to undo what Emma did: they'll fight not hide. If I had one complaint about Rosenberg's writing, it's that his plots were strong but he sometimes struggled to convey emotional connections between the characters. For example, Cyclops and Danielle are just monologuing here, where they're really having an important discussion about how Dani (and likely others) see the X-Men as being all about Scott, Jean, and Logan, with the rest of them serving merely as disposable red shirts. Reading this series, it's hard to argue with her.
My biggest complaint is with the simply awful art, which gets even worse somehow when Messina handles the action sequences after the X-Men return. Although I'm not a fan of Hickman, I do feel like it's time for a stable creative team to take the reigns of the X-books. We'll see how that goes shortly. All in all, though, I tip my hat to Rosenberg here for taking a pretty difficult situation and delivering a solid run that asked some core, existential questions about who the X-Men are. Were that we got more of those stories.
X-Force #10: This issue is incredibly rushed, spoiling the momentum that Brisson had built to this point. First, we have Rachel as phoenix ex machina. She takes down Stryfe fairly quickly and frees the mutants under his influence; the freed mutants and X-Force then make short work of the MLF. But, the issue then devolves into time-travel nonsense. Nate is committed to using his and Rachel's powers to wipe Stryfe's mind of these events, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. But, even if they are valid reasons, they would also presumably mean that Rachel should also wipe Nate's memories of this event as well, if the goal is to keep their memories from messing with the future. Rachel tries to convince Nate to let her kill Stryfe given the...ahem...strife that he causes Nate in the future. But, Nate says that he has to go through the strife to become the man who so inspired X-Force. I get that, but, if true, it implies that elder Cable knew younger Cable was going to kill him, because Nate is essentially saying they're in a time loop. In other words, if Stryfe's future actions turn younger Nate into older Nate, then we're in the same timeline. But, I though the whole point of younger Nate going into the past was that older Nate wasn't doing what he was supposed to do, because younger Nate's timeline changed when older Nate allowed the original X-Men to stay in the present. Their return to the past might've saved younger Nate's original timeline as is, but I still feel like Nate would be at least partly outside of it, because Rachel doesn't wipe his memories here. After all, the whole problem with the original X-Men in the present was the fact that they couldn't go home with the memories that they had. Brisson might've had time to explain away that part in another issue or two, but instead we're just supposed to roll with it. Cable, amirite? It's a shame, too, because I really liked this series, even as other people soured on it. Oh, well.
Sorry for this depressing review. At least with the mutant decks cleared, hopefully we've got brighter days ahead of us.
Also Read: Marvel's Spider-Man: City at War #5; Invaders #7; Nightwing #62; Star Wars: Tie Fighter #4
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