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A review by trike
All-New X-Men, Vol. 4: All-Different by Stuart Immonen, Brian Michael Bendis, Wade Von Grawbadger
1.0
What the actual fuck?
So I picked up the first four collections of this series at the library, even though I had actually read the first one when it came out as single issues, because Bendis' writing is really best enjoyed in the long form as a continuous story.
So far it's pretty "meh" except for a good chunk of volume 3, which was actually really good, and then I hit this. At first I thought perhaps I'd picked up a later volume instead of #4 because at the beginning there was a huge jump in story where the OG Xers are joining Cyclops' splinter group at the old Weapon X facility. Fine, we'll probably have a "three weeks earlier" flashback in a few pages to explain how we got here.
Nope.
I kept waiting for it and then hit the second chapter-slash-issue and nada. So I checked the back to see if I had indeed picked up #5 or something. Turns out there are two issues missing. Vol. 4 stops at issue 15 and this one picks up at issue 18. And it's extremely clear that a lot of shit happened in those two issues.
I mean, like waaaay more story occurred there than two typical issues of Bendis' work. And believe me, I know Bendis. His run on Ultimate Spider-man got me back into comics after a more than 17-year hiatus, and I loved it so much that I started reading everything he wrote.
So I'm guessing that there was a damn crossover during those two issues, but none of that information is here. Not even in a summation. No "previously in All-New X-Men..." thing to catch us up. I have zero idea where to find those issues, or even if they're collected anywhere. With Marvel's numbering system of the past five or six years, who even knows what goes where? Not me. And I kinda don't want to do a bunch of research to find missing issues of comics that I'm only lukewarm about.
And the kicker is that they've added some crappy 50th anniversary thing in the back along with X-Men Gold or something. Instead of collecting the actual issues that go with this story about these characters, Marvel instead adds a bunch of badly-written and terribly-drawn semi-flashback stuff featuring the X-Men as they were circa 1979-1981. That's when I was reading these books! I don't need a damn refresher course on these characters, because it was guys like me who were obsessing over the X-Men back in the day making them the gargantuan hit they are today.
Argh.
And the compacted stories they added weren't even good! Back then they were fucking epic, man. Globetrotting adventures, twisted psychological games, aliens galore in cosmos-shaking wars, long-lost relatives, first loves, break-ups, the deaths of entire planets... it was everything a 13-year-old of any gender could want. This was like having someone who's not very good at telling stories give you the highlights of that amazing decade-long run. In 20 minutes. You can't do it.
Yet Marvel wonders why their sales are failing. It's junk like this.
All of that would be fine if this collection were any good, but it's not. The story is just a mess and half the artwork is genuinely terrible. Whoever the not-Immonen artist was, they are not good. I could barely follow the story because the layouts didn't flow and the stuff was so busy and muddy that it simply didn't make sense. Such a mess on every level.
So I picked up the first four collections of this series at the library, even though I had actually read the first one when it came out as single issues, because Bendis' writing is really best enjoyed in the long form as a continuous story.
So far it's pretty "meh" except for a good chunk of volume 3, which was actually really good, and then I hit this. At first I thought perhaps I'd picked up a later volume instead of #4 because at the beginning there was a huge jump in story where the OG Xers are joining Cyclops' splinter group at the old Weapon X facility. Fine, we'll probably have a "three weeks earlier" flashback in a few pages to explain how we got here.
Nope.
I kept waiting for it and then hit the second chapter-slash-issue and nada. So I checked the back to see if I had indeed picked up #5 or something. Turns out there are two issues missing. Vol. 4 stops at issue 15 and this one picks up at issue 18. And it's extremely clear that a lot of shit happened in those two issues.
I mean, like waaaay more story occurred there than two typical issues of Bendis' work. And believe me, I know Bendis. His run on Ultimate Spider-man got me back into comics after a more than 17-year hiatus, and I loved it so much that I started reading everything he wrote.
So I'm guessing that there was a damn crossover during those two issues, but none of that information is here. Not even in a summation. No "previously in All-New X-Men..." thing to catch us up. I have zero idea where to find those issues, or even if they're collected anywhere. With Marvel's numbering system of the past five or six years, who even knows what goes where? Not me. And I kinda don't want to do a bunch of research to find missing issues of comics that I'm only lukewarm about.
And the kicker is that they've added some crappy 50th anniversary thing in the back along with X-Men Gold or something. Instead of collecting the actual issues that go with this story about these characters, Marvel instead adds a bunch of badly-written and terribly-drawn semi-flashback stuff featuring the X-Men as they were circa 1979-1981. That's when I was reading these books! I don't need a damn refresher course on these characters, because it was guys like me who were obsessing over the X-Men back in the day making them the gargantuan hit they are today.
Argh.
And the compacted stories they added weren't even good! Back then they were fucking epic, man. Globetrotting adventures, twisted psychological games, aliens galore in cosmos-shaking wars, long-lost relatives, first loves, break-ups, the deaths of entire planets... it was everything a 13-year-old of any gender could want. This was like having someone who's not very good at telling stories give you the highlights of that amazing decade-long run. In 20 minutes. You can't do it.
Yet Marvel wonders why their sales are failing. It's junk like this.
All of that would be fine if this collection were any good, but it's not. The story is just a mess and half the artwork is genuinely terrible. Whoever the not-Immonen artist was, they are not good. I could barely follow the story because the layouts didn't flow and the stuff was so busy and muddy that it simply didn't make sense. Such a mess on every level.