By Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Wood, Jason Aaron, Stuart Immonen, Frank Cho, David López, Chris Bachalo, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Esad Ribic, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8906-0 (US HB/Digital edition) 978-1-84653-572-7 (Marvel/Panini UK TPB)
Sixty years ago, at the dawn of the Marvel Age, some very special kids were chosen by wheelchair-bound mutant telepath Charles Xavier. Uncanny teen outsiders Scott Summers, Bobby Drake, Warren Worthington III, Jean Grey and Henry McCoy were taken under the wing of the enigmatic Professor X as he enacted his dream of brokering peace and achieving integration between humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, no matter what the cost.
To achieve his dream he educated and trained the youngsters – codenamed Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and The Beast – for unique roles as heroes, ambassadors and symbols in an effort to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear. The dream was noble, inspirational and worth dying for, and over the years many mutants battling under the X-banner did just that. The struggle to integrate mutants into society seemed to inevitably result in conflict, compromise and tragedy.
During the cataclysmic events of Avengers versus X-Men, the idealistic, steadfast and trustworthy team leader Cyclops killed Xavier before eventually joining with past comrade Magik and former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, if necessary, of human ones. This new attitude appalled many of their formers associates.
Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates Beast and Iceman joined with second generation X-Men such as Wolverine, Psylocke and Storm and stayed true to Xavier’s dream. Opting to protect and train the coming X-generation of mutant kids whilst honouring Xavier’s Dream, they are continuing his methods at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning under the direction of new Head Professor Kitty Pryde…
Things got really complicated after Hank McCoy discovered he was dying. Obsessed with the idea that the naive First Class of X-Men might be able to sway Mutant Enemy terrorist No. 1 back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity, the Beast used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to prevent a species war. By bringing the five youngsters back to the future he hoped to reason with the debased, potentially deranged Cyclops and fix everything before his impending death…
The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking Scott back to his senses, the confrontation simply hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, even after the younger McCoy impossibly cured his older self, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “bad” Scott was stopped…
The elder Cyclops and his “Extinction Team” face many problems. Magneto is playing a double (or is it a treble?) game; betraying the terrorists to S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill, and her to Cyclops. Moreover as they travel the world gathering up freshly activated Homo Superior kids, the Extinction-ers have been repeatedly targeted by a new mysterious next generation of robotic hunter/killer Sentinels.
All these tales were detailed in X-titles which resulted from the MarvelNOW! publishing event: a jumping-on point which reshaped the whole company continuity, taking the various mutant bands in strange new directions.
Scripted primarily by Brian Michael Bendis, this chronal chronicle collects all the issues in a crossover affecting those niche X-titles through September and October 2013 – specifically All-New X-Men #16-17, X-Men #5-6, Uncanny X-Men #12-13, and Wolverine & the X-Men #36-37, all bracketed by bookend miniseries X-Men – Battle of the Atom #1-2. This plot-light but action-packed, tension-drenched time-travel drama served to set up the next year’s worth of mutant mayhem…
It all begins with X-Men – Battle of the Atom #1, illustrated by Frank Cho, Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger, wherein demon-tainted Magik engages her teleportational ability to traverse time and space. Voyaging into the future to see what tomorrow holds for her kind, her answer appears to be Sentinels, increased human hatred and never-ending conflict…
Back in the now, Professor Pryde is continuing the First Class kids’ on-the-job training against an emergent and very ticked off mutant when more mystery sentinels attack. Like evil cavalry, the Extermination team materialise and the ideological opponents pitch in together. In the melee, young Cyclops is killed by a stray blast and his older-self blinks out of existence. Thankfully even as the entire area begins to shake and fall apart, mutant healer Triage is able to resurrect the dying X-Man. The disruptions cease, but the near-disaster reopens the old argument: the Original Five X-Men are endangering all of existence by living in their own future…
Resolute Kitty overrules young Jean Grey and orders the present-day Beast to send them back. However, when the furry blue boffin activates the time-cube a strange yet familiar band of X-Men tumble out of it…
The tale resumes in All-New X-Men #16 (Immonen & Von Grawbadger) as the Extinction team (which now includes the time-displaced young Angel and Grey School defectors the Stepford Sisters Celeste, Mindee & Phoebe) review the attack and consider the notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. might be behind the new Sentinels. Meanwhile, at the aforementioned Grey School the intruders (an elderly Kitty Pride, the grandson of Charles Xavier, an Iceman-Hulk, Deadpool, a much more mutated Beast, adult Molly Hayes from The Runaways and mystery telepath Xorn) are demanding that the Original 5 be immediately sent back to their own time… or else…
A huge fight erupts and in the confusion, traumatised kids Scott and Jean steal a plane, running away to make sense of all the pressure and acrimony. Most importantly, although the future X-Men’s minds were psi-screened, young Marvel Girl – thanks to her new, barely controllable telepathic abilities – has picked up something indefinable and ominously threatening, …
As tempers cool in the aftermath, Xorn removes her mask, revealing herself as the fugitive girl’s bitter, wiser, fiercely determined older self. One of them, anyway…
Written by Brian Wood and illustrated by David López & Cam Smith, X-Men #5 picks up the pace as the now tenuously collaborating teams set off after the kids. Storm, however, gives her all-female squad different instructions: Rogue and Psylocke join the main party whilst Pryde, Rachel Grey (the confusingly alternate Earth daughter of a different Cyclops and Jean Grey) and vampiric-mutant Jubilee are tasked with guarding the remaining Originals, little Henry McCoy and Bobby Drake…
Never good at obeying orders, they instead follow Scott and Jean themselves, provoking another all-X confrontation allowing the runaways to bolt for ruined mutant sanctuary Utopia – where the Extinction team are already waiting…
Tensions escalate in Uncanny X-Men #12 (by Bendis, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Mark Irwin, Jaime Mendoza, Victor Olazaba & Al Vey) as the “mutant terrorists” learn of the future X-Men and their mission. It is only then that Magik shares her recent time-travel jaunt and (some of) what she’s been keeping to herself…
In the light of these events the Extinction-ers are split: Cyclops wanting to help the kids whilst Emma rebels and announces that she’ll be helping Xorn and her crew send all the early X-Men back where they belong…
That resolution only lasts as long as it takes to meet their descendants and legacies. Wolverine & the X-Men #36 (Jason Aaron, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Andrew Currie) soon sees all three generations of mutants in brutal internecine combat which only ends when young Jean at last acquiesces to the constant pressure and promises to take her team back where they came from…
Then all hell breaks loose as the real Future X-Men show up…
Thanks to Magik, the true defenders of Xavier’s dream have travelled back to Now, tracking perpetrators of an assassination atrocity committed at the crowning moment of mutant/human cooperation. Colossus, Wiccan, Ice Master, Wolverine (AKA Jubilee), Quentin “Phoenix” Quire, Kymera and Sentinel-X seek to ensure the madness will end before it begins…
No more spoilers from me then except to say that Cam Smith & Terry Pallot help with inks on X-Men #6 and the concluding X-Men: Battle of the Atom #2 is scripted by Aaron with portentous ‘Epilogues’ by Bendis & Brian Wood, illustrated by Esad Ribic, Camuncoli, Currie, Tom Palmer & Kristopher Anka.
In that stunning, ever-escalating blockbuster clash the various iterations of Once-&-Future mutant champions switch sides and back again; fight, quip, discover which presumed ally is behind the new Sentinels and in some cases give their lives to preserve everything good before it all turns out OK – at least for the moment…
When the smoke clears a new chapter will begin with the Original kids willing but now unable to return to their origin time; the Jean Grey School forever changed; friendships and alliances destroyed and Cyclops’ Extinction team immeasurably stronger…
Crucially, the most psychotic and potentially lethal monster from tomorrow never made it back to the future and might possibly be stalking today’s heroes, whilst time-disruption caused by the assorted chronally-misplaced persons bodes badly for the continuance of existence…
X-Men: Battle of the Atom is peppered with pinups and a huge cover-&-variants gallery by Art Adams, Simone Bianchi & Frank Martin, Frazer Irving, Ed McGuiness & Dexter Vines, Marte Gacia, Lopez, Phil Noto, Stefano Casselli & Andres Mossa, Frank Cho, Shane Davis, Nick Bradshaw, Stephanie Hans, Adi Granov, Immonen, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Leonel Castellani, Bachalo (Lego X-Men covers), Anka, Milo Manara and Esad Ribic: a perfect end to the timeless never-ending battle…
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