All-New X-Men: Inevitable Vol.1 - Ghosts of Cyclops: Ghost of the Cyclops

I've had enough of X-men comics like this, this is poorly written and nocuous. I had felt that the initial concept of 'All-New X-men' would lead the narrative down an interesting path, and Battle of the Atom convinced me of this. Yet towards the end of Brian Michael Bendis' run, I lost interest and began to feel that the idea was turning against itself. The characters weren't developing significantly and neither was the storyline. This first volume of the new series only serves to persuade that the concept is no longer worthwhile, it's only credit is it's novel art style.*SPOILERS* Firstly, this is badly written. It's clichéd and shallow, whenever a character tries to tell you something important other than an out of place reference, there's a little mock Chris Claremont monologue that destroys any possibility of realism. The story isn't going anywhere anymore. The characters chop and change on their motivations and there is no one reason why they are together or in this story, they're just on an odd road trip. For some reason, they're being pitched against toad and blob, for the life of me I can't work out why Dennis Hopeless has picked the two most pathetic and outdated villains from the X-men universe! And why have they suddenly reverted back to being villains, toad was the janitor of the school and in a relationship with husk not so long ago and blob was a drug addict! Is an original X-men villain too much to ask for?Why must the story be so baseless and the story so convoluted. Plot holes and inaccuracies like Laura continuesly being referred to as 'the wolverine'. She's not. She's just not.Idie and Evan are totally wasted here. For some reason Idie has decided to go back to hating god, which has no place here and her resolution has been forgotten. Evan isn't even really in this story. Bobby's sexuality and soul searching is dealt with poorly. I feel like Dennis Hopeless has been hefted with attempting to portray a gay teens anxiety and of course as any hetero normative guy would do he's assumed that Bobby hates himself. That's just great. Besides, that was a random and aimless thing for Brian Michael Bendis to bring in anyway. It's attempting to be all inclusive and correct in the worst of ways. Finally, I just can't understand why they feel the need to have these characters costantly soul searching and falling out with each other, I mean there's better ways of writing an interesting narrative. I at least want to see some damn evolution in these characters, they can't whimper and sigh forever. This is just pathetic.

I didn't expect to like it, but I did. I fully intend on getting volume 2.

The story running through issues #1-6 of the All-New All New X-Men, is collected in  All-New X-Men: Inevitable Vol.1 - Ghosts of Cyclops .This volume opens “eight months” after Secret Wars, and the All-New All New X-Men are scattered about the country, Angel and the All-New Wolverine (X-23) are off skiing, Bobby is off avoiding talking about his life, while Hank McCoy and his new team of All-New X-Men are searching for Scott Summers (the young one), who has been missing since an unspecified event that followed Secret Wars involving the older Scott Summers. Young Scott is brought back into action when he runs into a gang of young new mutants who have taken the name “Ghosts of Cyclops” (the older one), inspired by whatever it is that we haven’t yet been told about, and who are out to terrorise humans in the (apparently) late Scott Summers’ name. This gives Hank a “fix” on Scott’s whereabouts, and he brings the All-New X-Men to their first assembly, and the first of two three-part stories, though there are a number of ongoing stories involving the cast and their personal relationships, and their existential (or teenage) angst, which play out across the volume.This is an entertaining volume, with good artwork that matches the style of the story. There is a Marvel-wide mystery regarding the gap between the opening of the new issue #1s and whatever happened after the Secret War event, and we know that the Inhumans’ Terrigen cloud has been having an unfortunate effect on mutants, leading Scott Summers to do something drastic; but that is about it, though Angel has also acquired wings of fire from somewhere and no-one is mentioning Jean.These are still the All-New Original X-Men, though they have been joined by a couple of other junior X-Men from other books; and they are still being surprised by the way the world has moved on since they left their own world behind.THE SPOILER ZONETHE SPOILER ZONETHE SPOILER ZONEIssue #1 opens “eight months” after Secret Wars, and the All-New All New X-Men are scattered about the country, Angel and the All-New Wolverine (X-23) are off skiing, Bobby is off avoiding talking about his life, while Hank McCoy and his new team of All-New X-Men are searching for Scott Summers (the young one), who has been missing since an unspecified event that followed Secret Wars. He is brought back into action when he runs into a gang of young new mutants who have taken the name “Ghosts of Cyclops” (the older one) and are out to terrorise humans in the late Scott Summers’ name. This gives Hank a “fix” on Scott’s whereabouts, and he brings the All-New X-Men to their first assembly…Issue #2 opens with a confrontation between the new X-Men team and the “Ghosts of Cyclops” new mutants, though Scott is not pleased to see them, and it ends with Scott and one of the Ghosts in jail, where he (Scott) tries to explain what his problem is with the “ghosts”. Meanwhile, Hank has taken the Bamf to a pizza parlour to refuel (bad idea), while Angel & Wolverine track the rest of the Ghosts, who escape them, and set off to break their partner out of jail…Issue #3 opens with the Ghosts of Cyclops having seized the police station where their colleague and Scott Summers are being held. Now Scott has to try and talk them into not fighting the large numbers police who are now surrounding the building. The X-Men then show up to do something, the police storm the building, and then Scott makes a speech…Issue #4 opens with Wolverine (X-23) and Angel fighting Yakuza in Tokyo, while Hank explains to the press about his new scanning app to find trouble for the X-Men to take care of. Scott’s speech last issue has gone viral and now the X-Men are celebrities. They hop about the world sorting stuff out- thanks to their ever-hungry Bamf, before arriving in Paris, where the All-New Blob is out on the town…Issue #5 opens with Angel worrying (again) about Wolverine (X-23) who has been temporarily killed by the Blob, who wanders off to look for a restaurant for his evening meal, before running into various X-Men who are also out and about in Paris. Eventually the team manage to reassemble (including Wolverine) and a big fight gets underway.Issue #6 continues with the battle between the All New X-Men and the All-New Blob on the streets of Paris. It is eventually brought to a close, as we see the Angel unleash his (as yet unexplained) new powers, and then various team members begin to open up about their personal problems and how they are resolving them, before they notice that Scott has been kidnapped by the Toad…

I had expected nothing new about this 'all-new' X-Men title.The group is almost the original 5 only Jean is gone and we have female Wolverine filling in.Annoyingly the orther two mebers are not introduced for those of us that have not been X-readers for some time or indeed may be new altogether - I have no idea who the 'hot & cold' girl is and while I have a little understanding of who/what Kid Apocalypse is (the name kindof helps) I cannot tell you what his actual powerset is! I quite like them being around however and I really thought I would want to just read the old/new team.Cyclops unfortunately has the legacy of the older-Cyclops to contend with which depresses his character and takes the emotional edge from the Cyclops title we had recently where Scott grew so much.The exchanges between Warren and Laura were well done but obvious in their set up - much more interesting is how Warren got flaming wings instead of feathers and seems to have adapted well.Hank's pre-blue and furry old/new character is written well and I have no issues with Bobby's sexuality developments.Bagley is hardly a favourite artist and can come over a tad simplistic but he seems to be coping well and enjoying his X-spotlight.There is a lightness of touch here that is not 'zany' like some titles seem to have veered towards of late.I like this book and yes I recommend it