X-Man: Schism #5(of 5):
Summary: Wolverine and Cyclops continue fighting while the mega-Sentinel bears down on Crazy Mutie Island. The two mutants continue their battle, and seemingly could care less that the mega-Sentinel was going to kill EVERYBODY, which leads to the various X-kids attacking and ultimately putting down the mega-Sentinel... Wait, that easily?! After the battle, the mini-Hellfire Club gloats about how well their mega-Sentinel worked out. Really?! It didn't kill anybody! Meanwhile, Wolvie talks to his newest young girl, Idie(you know he liked buddying up to young girls), and is sad to learn that she now felt like a killer and figured that was what it meant to be an X-Man. Not wanting to see the children placed in such a situation again, Wolvie tells Lord Summers that he was leaving. With that, Wolvie is joined by Iceman(??) and the two take most of the kids(the ones not in Gen Hope) as well as a tied-up Quintin Quire, hop a Blackbird and fly out to what used to be X-Mansion to start over.
Thoughts: I actually liked this issue. It gave us our schism event, something that Wolvie and Lord Summers simply couldn't reconcile, which turned out to be using the next generation of mutants as cannon-fodder. Lord Summers remained on Crazy Mutie Island with his band of villains, while Wolvie took a mess of X-kids(as well as Iceman and I'm sure some other X-Men) and went back to Westchester, where the X-Men belong. I enjoyed the fight scenes and thought Adam Kubert did a great job showing how brutally Wolvie and Lord Summers were going at it. Add the fact that the mini-Hellfire Club only had a cameo, and this was a good comic... Well, mostly... The event last issue that led to Wolvie and Lord Summers falling out was Summers wanting to use the X-kids to battle the mega-Sentinel and Wolvie being dead-set against that since he was sure the kids would perish. However, in this issue, the kids were the catalyst for taking down the mega-Sentinel, thus making Wolvie's point moot. Wolvie tried to save face in this issue by saying that maybe NEXT time the kids would die, but the fact that the kids came out of the battle alive and well kind of made Wolvie's argument look empty. But hey, on the plus side I'm more excited about the X-books than I've been in years, and plan on picking almost all of them up with the exception of Uncanny X-Men and X-Men: Legacy(until Mike Carey leaves that series), so Marvel must have done something right!
Score: 9 out of 10.
Look out, it's Zombie Wolverine!!!
Excellent fight scene, damn I loved that. And like you said... Cyclops was essentially proved right, so go Team Cyclops! That aside, this was a great event and I'm very interested on where it goes from here.
ReplyDeleteWolverine should be killed.
ReplyDeleteHe's the reason writers can't really do anything interesting with the X-Men.
Damn hype holding it all back.
You can shove your Team Cyclops already, JT! :P Yeah, as a card carrying member of Team Wolvie, he kind of came across looking bad-ish here, especially since it was mainly the kids who dealt with the mega-Sentinel. But hey, this event took a non-X-fan like yourself and made you interested in things, so kudos for that should go to Jason Aaron. Have you decided which(if any) of the X-books you'll be picking up going forward?
ReplyDelete"Wolverine should be killed." HA! I wouldn't go that far, Edward! I think Marvel has to try to avoid the temptation of putting Wolvie EVERYWHERE! I mean he's in two solo titles(with two other solo titles featuring characters tied directly to him), countless mini-series, and at least 4 team books! That's insane! If Marvel were to scale it back to how it used to be, ONE team book and ONE solo series(say Wolverine and the X-Men and Wolverine) with ONE writer using him(Jason Aaron) I think he could become an interesting character again. Seriously, Wolverine on the Avengers is a brutally bad idea... That series would sell just as well without him there.
Before setting Magneto loose on him and tearing Wolvie apart, I'd see if cutting his appearances would lead to better stories. Honestly, for me at least, I think M-Day is the thing MOST responsible for the writers not being able to do anything interesting with the X-Men. How can you have a bunch of books featuring mutants when you can't use/create NEW mutants! And that's on Marvel's editorial. Undo M-Day and I can almost guarantee the story quality picks up.
Yea, evidently the strongest sentinel ever made is kind of a chump. It seemed pretty lame that the kids easily defeated the sentinel, but I am glad all the kids decided to join Wolverine (except Hope's group, but I am pretty sure they're a cult). I always liked the dynamic of the New X-men and am more excited for Team Wolvie. I was disappointed with the cast of Wolverine and the X-men at first, but if this is the student/school comic then it makes much more sense.
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ReplyDeleteI miss scenes like this.
That's the first thing I thought, Jermox! This Sentinel tore through EVERYTHING and was put down by a handful of students? And the Hellfire Kids seemed to think that was a success?! Really?! And I'm glad somebody else sees Hope's group as a cult... She has such a hold over them it's not funny! I hope that gets explored down the road. But yeah, putting the kids with Wolvie is just another reason I'm more psyched for the Wolvie/X-Men book. I'm still undecided on whether I'll even be picking Uncanny up...
ReplyDeleteThat scene reminded me of the old New Mutants<->Academy X seires... I miss lighthearted X-stories like that... That seires was SUCH a breath of fresh air compared to Morrison's New X and Austin's Uncanny which were coming out with that New Mutants series. It's def worth a look if you've never read it.
HAHAHAHAAAA, HA, HA , HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAA! GOD WAS THIS A PIECE OF SHIT! Fuck Douchelops & Whoreverine with a ten feet nitrogen covered pole from anus to mouth.
ReplyDeleteOh & you Edward are not that wrong , the Old Logan has been gone for such a long ago that Sabretooth has become a far FAAAAAAAAAR more compelling & interesting & HONEST guy than Whoreverine. The reason they don't do anything interesting is just that they are HACKS, it's THAT EASY !
Now if you excuse me I'll go back to my fanfics , if you guys wanna read then , google devilkais & check them out , feedbacks & comments are always welcome (trolls on the other hand have their heads put on spikes...)
Team Cyclops bay-bee! I'll probably grab Uncanny and Wolverine and the X-Men, from there I'll probably converse with you about the teams again and see if any others interest me.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I enjoyed this, contrary to other comments I didn't think it was a P.O.S., I enjoyed the schism between the two, and I think the Sentinel was so easily defeated because it was merely a prototype that was made to prove the point that it would be able to get to Utopia and destroy the X-Men, and that's it's selling point. Now it didn't destroy them, as we know, but people who are afraid of mutants would be coerced to purchase one just based on the fact that it made it to Utopia and gave them a fight, and that's all the Hellfire Club's goal really was, to put the heavy hitters on the shelf, distract half of the team, and use their product to drum up some sales by taking on a less powerful than usual team of X-Men.
Well we all know I enjoyed this one, I busted out a 9 for it, and with the way I score, anything 9 and over was boarder-line great. I am STILL undecided on Uncanny, JT... It looks like Uncanny is going to start off with one of my favorite X-villains, Mr. Sinister, but I think the cover price is something like $5(!) and that's kind of pricey, even for me! If I had a complaint it would STILL be how easily the Sentinel was taken down... I mean seriously, it got OWNED! Hell, with how badly it did, if Lord Summers and Wolvie had simply put their differences aside and worked together THEY probably could have put that Sentinel down! It was built up for like 3-4 issues as this unstoppable menace, and then bam, it got stopped. Other then that though, this was one of the better X-stories I've read in quite some time(probably since Brubaker's run on Uncanny over 30-40 issues ago.)
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me I wouldn't be missing much if I just picked up the last two issues of schism and called it a day...
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to lie, the preview scans of Uncanny #1 looked pretty sick. It should be really titled "Storm and the x-villains," but whatevs. I just hope Gillon portrays the characters as powerful as they should be, not a bunch of bums who can be outwitted by the hell-babies.
I agree with your critique X - no way stupid hope and the hopelings should've been able to take down that sentinel.
SChism has a whole was not that great of an event in my opinion. # issues would have sufficed. NO ONE believed that the strongest sentinel ever was really a threat. I still HATE the idea of the mini-hellfire club, but the art all trhough the series was pretty solid. It was a treat to get 7= solid pages of kubert art and zero dialogue! Bravo! but anyway I did enjoy this issue and schism towards the last few issues. I'm not a big x-men reader because I spent too much money picking up other back issue stuff to spend anymore on uncanny or others. Therefore I probably won't be picking up any of the new x-titles but i hope that they are good!
ReplyDelete3 issues*
ReplyDeletePERFECTLY put, TRobb... The first three issues kind of set things up, but if you just read the last two issues and read the summary in the front of issue #4, you'd have been fine and saved $12 in the process! As for Uncanny, I am totally on the fence... The price is scaring me away(plus I've never been sold of Gillen's X-work), but it doesn't look awful... So idk... And yeah, Hope and company defeating the BEST SENTINEL EVER was kind of a real letdown for me.
ReplyDeleteI can understand that, Cap. The first issue probably could have been cut easily, I'd have left this at four myself. I think they could have gotten everything needed across. I still enjoyed this mini more than you, I've been really down on the X-Men since the trek out to San Fran->Utopia, so I'm glad to see(some of) them going back to their roots in Westchester. But yeah, the Hellfire Kids hurts this one a bit for me, but for the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to the X-books, and I'm about as critical an X-fan as you'll find!
On the subject of Gillen, I took a look back at the last few years of Uncanny, starting with Brubaker's run, and I agree with you, sorta. Brubaker's has been the best of the bunch, but on it's own merits was mediocre at best. Brubaker brought us:
ReplyDeleteDeadly Genesis (Bad)
the Extremists (Great)
Messiah complex (mixed bag)
Divided We Stand (mixed bag)
SFX (cowritten with Fraction, ass)
I wouldn't call that a strong run, but it had its moments. I'd say Fraction's run was of comparable quality overall ("Utopia" was pretty good, the rest, not so much), but the bad of Fraction was far worse than the bad of Brubaker, giving Brubaker's run the slight edge.
Gillen's first story was more breakworld crap. I think Gillen's "Fear Itself" stuff was overall good though, and it's pretty early still in his run. I'm optimistic that some good can come out of Uncanny in regenesis and beyond.
Ooo, I've got to disagree with you right off the bat with Deadly Genesis, TRobb! I loved that mini! I became quite the Vulcan fan after that... That's why I enjoyed the Rise/Fall of the Shi'ar Empire storyline so much. I normally don't care for the Shi'ar(I'm more of a Kree man myself!), but that LONG storyline was enjoyable, mainly because it took the X-Men away from Earth for a while. As for Gillen, you're right, he started out on the wrong foot with that Breakworld junk... That should have been left behind... But his Fear Itself stuff WAS an improvement. The problem with Gillen is I tend to lump his Gen Hope and Uncanny run together and for the most part I hated his Gen Hope work, which bled into how I viewed his Uncanny work, fairly or unfairly.
ReplyDeleteBut I can definitely understand your feelings towards Deadly Genesis... That is one of tjose stories that always seems to divide X-fans! I've heard plenty from the people who hated that story to understand that point of view!
I think Wolverin´s point is Using kids as soldiers, he wants the kids to be kids not Assasins or super soldiers.
ReplyDeleteHe was not discussing about the capacity of them to defeat the centinel, just the whole fact to put them in that situation.
So he is still Right =P
Although I am taking Wolvie's side, I could never understand the argument of "kids as kids, not kids as soldiers". From the beginning Xavier has been making soldiers out of kids.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Alien! That's the point I should have made! It didn't matter if the kids could win or not in Wolvie's mind, that's a moot point. The point was that they shouldn't have to fight the Sentinel. I tip my hat to your logic, Alien! :D
ReplyDeleteIdk, Jermox. I can see Wolvie being like, "My adolescence was so messed up I want to see these kids get the chance to be kids before we ship them off to war." Granted, Xavier had Bobby fighting Magneto and the Brotherhood at like 15, but that doesn't necessarily make it right. At least that's how I'd defend things from Wolvie's point of view.
Exactly. in the first issue Wolvie refuses to train the kids and sends idie to play with Dolls, and in the last Idie thinks that is fine to be a killer cuz that is what to be an X-men means. Thats is the moment when Wolvie decides to go.
ReplyDeleteAnd I hated the mini hellfire club so much as you. But the Idea of the mini kilgore is to make a lot of money selling the new sentinels, so he need the Mutans alive. Maybe for that reason THIS mega sentinel wasnt a big deal but enought to sell the product.