This series would be screwed without Immonen
I never really understood all the hate for Bendis, but I can see some of the reasons why people don't like him that much. He kinda ignores already established ideas, concepts, and characteristics of certain people for the sake of his own storytelling. For example, the scene where Wolverine confronts young Cyclops. Not only does he contemplate actually killing Cyclops, but he does it out loud, with none of the faculty really trying to stop him, and in front of all the students. In fact, there's a moment where he asks for the student's vote as to whether he should kill Cyclops. I felt like this part kinda destroyed all the development to the character that guys like Jason Aaron and Rick Remender wrote. In UXF Wolverine felt a lot of regret for being involved in young Apocalypse's killing. Then, he really felt the weight of all his murders when he had to off his own son. These two events should have had an enormous effect on him, that's what Remender wanted. Jason Aaron's WATXM established Logan as a more responsible man that was over his animal days. He became a character that was almost a good role model to his students (or at least, as good as Wolverine is gonna get). Anyway, that part was really stupid. I'm just gonna try playing it off like it was a heat of the moment kinda thing for Wolverine for future readings. Also, when Beast said he wants Cyclops to "take his shame to the grave" also bothered me. Does Beast really think that little of Scott that he would rather him die with shame than redeem himself while he's alive? Him and Wolverine have been written as huge hypocrites for the last year, and not just by Bendis, but by almost every writer at Marvel. That really needs to be fixed. I like the idea of Cyclops running around as a sort of villain/anti-hero/revolutionary in the eyes of the other heroes, but I hate the massive amount of contempt he's being shown by every character, mainly the ones who have their own checkered pasts. Oh, I can't forgot, it seems like we might be adding young Jean Grey to that 'elite' group of hypocrites. After she has that beautifully drawn splash page where she sees everything that happens to her in the future, she gives young Scott the cold shoulder. So, she basically gets mad at him because he kills Xavier in the future (I'm assuming that's why she was mad), but completely forgets that their also parts of her life where they fall in love, get married, raise a kid, lead the X-Men and X-Factor, and everything else that's happened in the last 50 years of X-men continuity! Perfect...Hopefully in the next issue, this is justified, corrected, and/or explained.
Overall, despite my previous paragraph consisting completely of complaints, I didn't hate this issue or this series. I actually like this series and the idea of the old x-men coming to the present. I enjoyed the scenes where Beast and Jean were in present Beast's memories. All of it was good. This series is decent. I just wish Bendis would do some more research on certain characters in order to understand them a little better and to get their voices down. He shouldn't be taking such liberties, regardless how high up he is on the Marvel Pyramid. However, it doesn't seem like anyone else at Marvel is doing anything to fix or explain Wolverine and Beast's hypocrisy. Get to it writers!!! Lastly, I definitely cannot forget how amazing Stuart Immonen's art is. Every page is so well done. Like I mentioned before, that splash page with Jean Grey learning everything about her future self was perfect. His art itself, makes these issues worth buying.
