Wolverine and the X-Men #6 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I can say, in all honesty, that I have no idea what in Hell happened in this issue.

I've read this story from the beginning.  I haven't liked it, but I've read it and I've paid as close of attention as I could muster.  Basically, all this issue had to do was explain why future Quentin was manipulating the past to eliminate Evan and who Faithful John was.  Somehow, it accomplish neither goal.

First, Quentin did defeat Evan in the future, but, for some reason, he looked in the past and, upon seeing young Quentin and/or young Idie, decided that he also had to defeat Evan in the past.  To that end, he manipulated Faithful John and Edan Younge to return to the past to attack him.  But, we never learn why seeing Quentin and/or Idie in the past inspired him to defeat Evan in the past.  Wasn't it better for him to get the win in the future, since, as he said, it was the thing that redeemed him in the eyes of the other X-Men?  We also don't know why Evan turned against the X-Men in the future, since future Quentin actually makes it seem like future Evan was the more successful X-Man until his fall.

Moreover, Latour also never tell us who Faithful John is; we only know what we already knew, that he wanted revenge on Evan for his ruined world.  However, since his world is presumably different from future Quentin's world (since Quentin's wasn't destroyed), it would also have been nice to discover how Quentin found him.  Latour also fails to mention how Edan managed to create a billion-dollar corporation in the past from scratch with no one noticing.

In fact, it's even worse that all that.  At some point, future Quentin tells present Quentin that he did it all to "save them from us."  But, why would "they" need to be saved if future Quentin defeats Apocalypse?  Isn't that a good thing?

[Sigh.]  If it's not clear, I'm done with this series, making it series #2 that Jason Latour has forced me to drop.

* (one of five stars)

Wolverine and the X-Men #5 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I was actually thinking about dropping this series, but we finally get somewhere here.

First, Quentin asks the question that I've been asking all along, namely how Evan could destroy Faithful John's world if Quentin killed Evan before that.  Quentin comes to the conclusion that the Phoenix is actually responsible for the lies, and he apparently convinces Younge to send him to his future self.  Latour isn't totally clear why Younge decides to do so, so I'm left to assume that Younge is actually working for future Quentin.  (Latour might be getting somewhere, but I'm not saying that it's still not confusing.)  We're left wondering why future Quentin sent back Younge and (maybe) Faithful John to take out present Evan, but at least it's a clearer question than our original one.  Speaking of Faithful John, everything related to him is still unclear, as the preceding few sentences make clear.  (Follow that?)

I'm not saying that I now love this series.  I feel like it's still an issue-to-issue decision for me.  But, I'm here for at least one more, since the idea of Quentin and Idie tearing through the future sounds pretty great.

*** (three of five stars)

Wolverine and the X-Men #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

As expected, Latour still has us wandering through the desert with no hope of water.  He seems more focused on peppering this issue with similarly bad lines ("50 Shades of Jean Grey?"  Really?) than telling an actual story.

We learn that Younge has a sword called the Phoenix Blade that can absorb the Phoenix's energy.  But, it's unclear if it's the same one that Korvus used to wield, since I'm pretty sure that one used the power of the Phoenix, not absorbed it.  If I had to extrapolate from this revelation, I'd say that Younge wants Quentin to become the Phoenix so that he can absorb his energy.  But, why would he have to come to the past to do that?  Couldn't he have done that in his present, when Quentin already was the Phoenix?  Did Quentin die in his confrontation with Evan, so it wasn't an option?  As Quentin himself says, why are Faithful John and Young in the present if Quentin does what they say and kills Evan at some point in the future?  Latour isn't unfurling the mystery the way that Aaron is in "Original Sin:"  instead of answering some questions only to raise other ones, we still have the same ones that we had in the first issue.

I'm not sure how many more issues that I've got on this train.  I'm not that interested in yet another story about the X-Men's future (particularly when it's less interesting than the one that Bendis is telling in "All-New X-Men"), but I'm particularly not interested in one that doesn't actually progress.

** (two of five stars)

Wolverine and the X-Men #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

One of my main complaints about Latour on "Winter Soldier" is that he may have been writing in English but everything sounded like a bad translation from another language.  I hate to say that I feel like history is repeating itself.  From Evan's bizarre report about what makes one special to Edan Younge's incoherent ramblings about Quentin's possible future, I spent most of this issue confused.

First, we've got the convoluted plot.  On the face of it, the plot is actually pretty simple:  Younge and John are both members of the Askani clan and they've come to the past either to kill Evan before he becomes Apocalypse or to train Quentin so that he's ready to stop Apocalypse.  The problem is that the details are more problematic.  For example, Younge makes no sense.  One one hand, he tells Quentin that he has been "neutered by the comforts of those whose time passed them by decades ago."  On the other hand, he laments that they only teach him violence.  Is he comfortable or is he violent?  Which one is the problem?  Also, I still have no idea what connection the company that they've founded has to do with anything, particularly the Phoenix.  All we know is that they seemingly hacked everyone's iPhones in an attempt to attract the X-Men.  Why not just attack Evan?

But, the real problem is the scripting.  For example, Evan's report on individuality is clearly supposed to have some deeper meaning, but, despite my degree in French literature, I can't for the life of me understand what it is.  Wolverine's sub-conscious uses his healing factor to...create his hairstyle?  I think that he's saying that their subconsciouses all guide their powers, making them, according to Storm, far more similar than they believed.  But, isn't that a pretty benign observation?  OK, their sub-consciouses guide their powers.  Does that mean anything interesting?  Doesn't our subconscious guide everything that we do?  It's not exactly actionable information.  Moreover, I have no idea what it has to do with Storm's ability to shake off Faithful John's mind control, which is when the story gets told.

In other words, I'm worried about where we're going on a Latour-penned book again.

** (two of five stars)

Wolverine and the X-Men #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Huh.  This issue is hard to follow, but it's intentionally so, so I won't hold it against Latour.  He manages to get a lot of intriguing ideas and potential conflicts on the table here; the key to this series' success will be how well he develops them and if he's going to have to rush to get there.  (Paging Dan Slott.)

First, we have this mysterious new Phoenix Corporation, which seems to claim that humanity used to control the Phoenix until Jean Grey essentially stole it for mutantkind.  I'm not sure how controlling the Phoenix fits into its business model or why it drove it seemingly to take over every electronic device on the planet, but, you know, details.  Also, I'm not really sure how humanity managed to control a cosmic force with no one knowing about it, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not supposed to buy that part.  Instead, it all seems like a front from yet another time-traveling figure.  He seems to be connected to the Phoenix and from the same timeline as the future X-Men from "X-Men:  Battle of the Atom," though I'm not 100 percent sure about the latter part, since he also mentions the Askani.  As such, it's possible that he's actually from the future of the future X-Men.  Regardless, he reveals that Quentin is destined to face Evan in battle, though this guy seems to want to use Quentin now to take out Evan, preventing his future.  At least, I think he does.  Hopefully it'll be clearer next issue.

In the meantime, Latour gives us a great scene between Storm and Wolverine, where she essentially accuses him of making everything -- even Jean's legacy -- all about him, and he can't really find a plausible way to deny it.  I'd be very happy if this series spent more time focusing on Storm and Wolverine leading the School, so I'm cautiously optimistic about Storm's increased role in this series so far.  Moreover, the Phoenix Corporation has a lot more staying power than the Kiddie Hellfire Club, particularly since it seems to have taken on the role of Damage Control by way of front company.

*** (three of five stars)

Wolverine and the X-Men #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

One of my main complaints about Jason Aaron's work on "Wolverine and the X-Men" was that it was oddly emotionally stunted.  The kids were frequently put in situations that proved to be a challenge even to their adult counterparts, but Aaron always played those moments for laughs.  Except for the excellent arc that took place in the Savage Land, he rarely explored the emotional impact of those situations on the kids.

As such, it didn't take me a while to realize that this series is under new management.  Latour goes 180 degrees here, focusing almost exclusively on emotions.  Nothing really happens in this issue -- Quentin becomes a teaching assistant to expectedly disastrous results and Logan travels into space to try to recruit Fantomex as an instructor.  But, Latour uses those moments to tease out some of the emotions that we didn't see in the previous series.  Quentin is plagued by the revelation that he'll one day become Phoenix, feeling as if his life is now pre-determined.  He rebels against the efforts by the Grey School staff to push him into adulthood, probably because he has a pretty clear vision now of what that entails.  Moreover, Logan gives the clearest description of his motivation to start the school to date, telling Fantomex that it serves as his, and, hopefully, Fantomex's, redemption for their sins.

Moreover, Latour actually focuses on how these emotions are in play in the dynamic between students.  When Glob Herman decided to leave the School during the Savage Land arc, we didn't really have a sense of why he wasn't happy or why he didn't like his fellow classmates.  But, by the end of this arc, Latour has already set up a rivalry between Hellion and Quentin that could get very interesting, given that the two of them walk on the darker side of the morality spectrum on a good day.  It made me realize just how much this sort of story was missing from the previous series.

It was a refreshing change, though, admittedly, one that I found jarring.  I'm intrigued to see where Latour is going to take us.  I wasn't a fan of his work on "Winter Soldier," but this book is much different from that one.  At any rate, it's a promising start.

**** (four of five stars)