lol true story.... seriously the "Edit" button has killed enough of post to write a Game of Thrones episode.
You don't say... We could've started our own successful franchise =\
To the Dark Beast point- It's unforgivably sloppy and poor. The fact is that this is a type of incompetence that is unforgivable, and is only seemingly accepted because of the fact that Dark Beast isn't on anybodies list of best, favorite or influential characters. Nobody cares about him so it's not a big deal, but to me you could literally replace Dark Beast with Jubilee in that issue without changing the dialogue and as stupid as it would still seem, it would actually make more sense because she and Cyclops have actually shared a panel before. Even the most avid haters of continuity know that character continuity is something that should be accounted for when giving someone a vendetta, hell anyone who knows what the word vendetta means would know that they'd have to have some sort of connection between them.
I could excuse this if it was hinted that there was more to it, or if the characters seemed more confused by it but this hasn't been addressed or hinted at whatsoever and it seems as though the matter is considered closed both in and out of universe. Which is a special level of incompetence in comic writing.
Glad we're in agreement here.
To the Avengers point- Here i give some slack for a number of reasons. The first is that I really don't like the Avengers being involved in X-Men stories. It doesn't end well and hampers the X-Men. The second is because it's not an entirely new problem to have to explain why the X-Men's world shaking problem doesn't warrant the attention of Earth's mightiest heroes. And nowadays with 100 Avengers flying around 20 to a helicarrier, I can see why you'd have to at least acknowledge that they aren't in this story that they have connections too. Basically it's a problem we'd encounter whenever a writer wants to tell a big story on this scale without the Avengers.
Personally I took what Beast was saying as him just being overly dramatic because of the hopelessness of situation. Which makes sense considering how he's always right and this moment he didn't have an answer so him overreacting because the Avenger's didn't answer his phonecall doesn't seem out of character. The way i see it the Avengers really were all in space and Beast is just frustrated that in the moment when it would be nice for him to prove Cyclops world view wrong by having the X-Men and Avenger's team up and save the day and show Scott and the world that the system works...the people he would need to stand by him aren't available....and that caused him to paint the Avengers as selfish A-holes.
See that's the point, even if you don't like their inclusion, even if they don't going to appear, there's still that "adults know" outlook and sentiment that enslaves the X-mentality "Where are Avengers?" "Call the Avengers" "This threat is too big for us". Hell "ugly stepchildren" is totally canon now. What happened to the times when writers didn't have to mention them all the time and we as readers subconsciously knew "That's because Avengers know that X-men are the most competent guys in this area, and they're no pushovers in general, we trust them."? It's gone, it started to fade away during Decimation, and it's the canon now. Slowly, most of the writers pushed Avengers' total authority right down our throats and they don't stop patronizing the X-books even without being there lol You can say, this is not on Bendis, but I just remember recently in one of Wood's last issues Storm said "Why would we call Avengers? Avengers need to call us. We're the elite." Yeah, apparently not for Bendis who cannot even make a research to know X-men dealt with mad reality benders without his beloved and silly time travel, and without "the corporate elite".
On characterization- Generally I like Uncanny. I like the Cuckoo's, I like Tempus, I like the interactions. But only two of those things were characters. Cyclops i find myself more and more just liking him for the journey it took to get him here then for anything he's been doing while he's in the here and now. We have no idea what's going on with him and while that's good for making us question his place on the good guy/bad guy scale....it also makes him seem eradic and insane, since he says one minute he's training the kids for a revolution and the next that he doesn't know what he's doing. I can get showing that he still has some reluctance with his new role, but he either has a plan or he doesnt. Pick one.
Magik is Awesome, Magneto is good, most of the students don't bug me. Mystique needs to either be a major player in this book or leave it alone because she keeps dropping in an out of sight without resolving anything. Emma is....I'll say this she's not out of character, or being poorly written like most say....she's just wallpaper. Dazzler should be one of the breakout stars of this book as the teams Bad@ass after what she went through but is joining Emma in the wallpaper department.
I find it almost hilarious that no matter where i look, I like the location and the role of the characters (Dazzler as a angry and betrayed PTS person is awesome) but I can't think of anything interesting that they do. It shows that Bendis is a great idea man...but developing characters sucks for him
To me his Cyclops is a pale imitation of Gillen's. Maybe I'm too radical in my perception of a character, but Gillen's Consequences set the tone he needs to be written t me. Admitting his questionable morality, taking responsibility for mistakes and accepting the cost, and not this full of denial, reactive pseudo revolutionary. I judge by what I see, and using Magneto to say that "Cyclops is losing it" isn't convincing me in his edginess, his actions and achievements are not there no matter how "radical" he speeches are.
Dazzler... lol, I wonder if Bendis even knows that Magneto once tried to kill her in cold blood in one of his most notable low points since the Silver Age story haha But again, I guess it's her haircut and grim approach that makes her edgy, not the actions. Etc, etc.
On time travel- I preface this by saying that I really don't like time travel. But I do like long plots where events and hints are laid out and culminate in a big finale. To me that's whats happening here.
In the same way the last big plot involved 4 years of hints, build up, questions and allusions toward Hope, The Phoenix and the return of the mutants, I think this is building up toward a big X-Men time travel event sometime in the future. Instead of seeing Firebirds, connecting to mutants, and prophecies of importance like we had with Hope....we have Bota, the O5, the Future Brotherhood, Magik, Dr, Strange, and a time traveling mutant that can go back in time when no one else can ,All of it giving us the rules for time travel and timelines repeatedly .
I don't dislike the idea of this build, though here we see Bendis' weakness in that while he is repeatedly going to the well with this idea to the point we have to know it's important, from an Inuniverse there hasn't been a single hint given that somethings up, or that somethings coming. We literally know two things: 1) Beast is going on Trial, and 2) the future is constantly changing. It's been hinted that someone (Tempus) changed the timeline before and that that is why Prof. X's actions have been so weird but really we've got nothing but a series of repeated uses of a plot device and very little hints at a plot.
That's the problem, any time travel story is rotten at the core these day. Let me give you an example, Remender's concept of "Lord of the Seven Suns" was one of the best time-jumping concepts with seven of the most important breaking points in all continuity. In the end of the day, we had this abominable Avenge the Earth arc with its wrong morality messages while being so god damn pretentious. In the same day's end, there are no seven suns even to canonize it. There's a Hickman sun, an Aaron sun and a Bendis sun as we all know well how they love their time-travels and their own versions of "one an the only" future.
And with Bendis being at the top of this food chain, I'll tell you just one thing. Once I've dealt with one of his Avengers time-traveling arc. By its end, I couldn't read comics for a couple of days. That's all I'll say here.
All in all- I like Uncanny X-Men....I like it as the flagship.... but it has very visible flaws that have less to do with plot and more to do with writing style. Bendis is basically a guy in a room that shouts out ingredients randomly. He think's he's a genius because he's actually telling us he knows what's for lunch....but without any context he didn't prove anything except that he can yell "Pepperoni" really loud and piss off alot of people doing it....it's essentially his writing style in a nutshell.
The deal with Pepperoni, it ain't kosher =)
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