All New X-Men #11

by Tori B. on May 01, 2013

We all now know that Warren has made the big decision to join the new Xavier School instead of staying with his friends at the Jean Grey School, this is young Jean Grey’s reaction to it all.
 
 
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis | Artists: Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger, & Marte Gracia
Cover: Immonen, von Grawbadger, & Gracia | Publisher: Marvel
 
 
 Okay, it’s not ALL about Jean Grey but naturally there’s a lot of Jean Grey to star in this issue, which is not surprising at all but I’m going to bitterly point it out every time it happens. Thank goodness there’s Emma and the Stepford Sisters (I’m under the impression that Bendis is trying to sway everyone away from calling them the Stepford Cuckoos) in this issue to be the sarcastic voice and take down the great Jean Grey a peg or two. Shame they won’t be around more.
 
Aside from my ranting against Jean this issue was actually great, and despite not having large explosions (wait, scratch that), huge battle scenes (of the violent nature), things heat up and get fairly intense and is a major soap opera for any X-Men fan. With Warren defecting to the Uncanny team, his actions spur literally everyone into argument with each other; the pages are heavy with speech bubbles and thought bubbles and no one loses control more than Jean.
 
As an apparently masochistic fan of the characters, some of the greatest moments are when everyone’s against each other: Stepford Sisters taking down Jean, Magneto against Wolverine, Wolverine yelling at Emma, Scott yelling at Emma, and more blame being put on Beast (as opposed to constantly yelling at Scott for everything). What’s also interesting is both sides tossing about Xavier’s name, both fighting for Xavier’s dream but with distinct ideologies of approaching it and what his dream meant. Of course all this intense drama needs a nod to the artists, not just to Bendis who is at some of his top Marvel work with the X-titles. As mentioned earlier, even without physical violence (nothing major anyways), it almost feels like reading one with a lot of panels, great facial expressions and general composition and body language of the characters, and incredibly intense colours. Reading everyone argue with one another could have gotten tiring really fast, but it didn’t.
 
Fans of Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde will enjoy their tender moment later on in the issue. It’s heartwarming enough that even I almost warmed to it. What I did appreciate about it is truly seeing how much Kitty has matured in the series (way to go character development) and I think those who weren’t fans of her before will definitely have her growing on them now.
 
Ps. I hate that there’s a certain team that gets drawn so beautifully every time they’re in a title that’s not their own.   

Our Score:

8/10

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