By Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger and many and& various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-626-7
When bestial mutant Henry McCoy learned he was dying, he indulged in a spot of time-travel in a last-ditch attempt to give his life meaning. Seeking to prevent a species war, he brought the young, naive X-Men of his own youth into the future to reason with his radicalised former comrade Scott Summers, praying the still idealistic and hopeful teens could reason with Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 and divert him from a path of doctrinaire madness…
The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking Cyclops back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, even after the younger McCoy miraculously cured his older self, boy-Henry and the rest of the X-Kids were trapped in their own future and began gradually defecting to the radicalised team…
Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis, this stellar saga collects All-New X-Men #25-29 (published from June to August 2014), taking the time-displaced teens to the ends of the universe and even further into uncharted temporal territory…
The mind-shattering rematch commences in All-New X-Men #25 (illustrated by Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger and a host of guest-artists) and follows a dramatic change in young Jean Grey’s status as the team catches their collective breath after being shanghaied to the ends of the universe by Gladiator and the Shi’ar who sought to exterminate the timelost telepotent before she could become a host vessel for the Phoenix…
Already the teen quintet have been reduced to four as the younger Cyclops elected to remain in space with Corsair of the Starjammers– the father he believed dead and gone for most of his young life…
The future-locked Angel, Iceman, Beast, and Jean are stretched to their emotional breaking point. Since an attack by Evil Mutants masquerading as X-Men from the future (X-Men: Children of the Atom) they have faced the very real prospect of never returning to their own time; risking destroying all reality with every moment they aren’t back there and, worst of all, watching Jean go slowly crazy trying not to become the impossibly perfect superwoman everybody keeps talking about in such hushed tones…
The celebratory 25th issue is something of a visual tour de force as the elder Beast has a dreamlike visitation showing him the alternate futures and realities that have been eradicated because of his precipitate act of bringing the teen heroes into today…
Short on plot but fascinating fans with tantalising glimpses of rosters both familiar and fantastic, what follows is a feast of vignettes, scary, dramatic and even funny, illustrated by David Marquez, Bruce Timm, Arthur Adams, David Mack, Robbi Rodriguez, Lee Bermejo, Kent Williams, J.G. Jones, Maris Wicks, Jason Shiga, Dan Hipp, Jill Thompson, Paul M. Smith, Skottie Young, Ronnie del Carmen, J. Scott Campbell, Max Wittert, Jake Parker and Bob Wiacek; some of which, I’m sure, we’ll be seeing again one day…
The narrative resumes with Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger at the artistic helm again with #26 and Jean’s own nightmares regarding the change in her power-set brought on by the Shi’ar confrontation and her brush with the Phoenix force. She finds a measure of solace in the unsuspected solicitude of the older Cyclops…
Meanwhile outside in the Canadian wilderness surrounding the fortress-like New Charles Xavier School, Angel is trying to explain to X-23 (a teenage female clone of Wolverine) that young Scott has dumped her for a life of adventure with his dad. When she storms off she is ambushed by the last person she expected to see…
Later, when Professor Kitty Pryde sends out search parties, they find her near-dead form and rush her back to safety inside the citadel… but it isn’t her…
The duplicity is the first gambit in a second attack by the future Brotherhood – hulking monster Ice-Thing, Deadpool, a Hank McCoy somehow consecrated to evil, psychotic shapeshifter Raze, super-strong Molly Hayes (from the Runaways) and Marvel Girl’s psionic remnant Xorn – led by the son of Charles Xavier…
Chapter three reveals the uncanny origins of the wicked Xavier and his crusade to destroy his father’s legacy. As the invaders storm the facility, Xorn turns the psychically conjoined Stepford Sisters – Celeste, Mindee and Phoebe – into a telepathic torture engine to torment and take out the students…
In the melee one casualty discovers a new superpower and the tables turn when the real X-23 bursts in, eager to pay back her recent murder in kind…
Xavier’s objective is Jean and, as he psychically engages her, his insane true motivations are revealed for the first time, as is a fortuitous secret – not all of his team are volunteers…
He is also completely unaware of and unprepared for the changes wrought by her ordeal in outer space and soon the battle goes catastrophically against him. The one good thing about time travel, however, is that that you can try, try, try again…
To Be Continued…
Dark, moody, chronally complex, convoluted and explosively cathartic, One Down blends brooding tension and sinister suspense with staggering all-out action and comes with a stunning 10 covers-&-variants gallery by Immonen, Von Grawbadger, Rafael Grampa, Frank Cho, Alex Ross and Matthieu Forichon as well as AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) for access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smartphone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ and © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.