What I thought of...All New X-Men #8

I hate to sound like a dead horse, but I am SO not an X-Men guy. Until this book came along, that is. I admit, I expected a lot of people to bail after Immonen left the book, but that's not really happening. Sure, Bendis is writing it, but the premise is, from a distance, a little hokey. The 5 teenage X-Men come to the future to straighten out what Cyclops did wrong? Yeah.....right.

The Good: It's the X-Men teaming up with the Avengers!!!...kinda. Young Angel goes off looking for himself, litterally, and both Angels stumble upon an attack on Avengers Tower by the bad guys of Hydra. Except, the Avengers aren't exactly AT HOME, so it's an all Angel vs Hydra fight. Until the Avengers DO come home and then the X-Men get a stern "talking to" by Captain America. This issue works in several different ways. The "young version" meets "old version" gag is still entertaining and has yet to go stale. The interaction between young Angel and Kitty Pryde is REALLY great, and there's an ending that I won't spoil, but is almost jaw-dropping. VERY well done issue.

The Bad: Of all the issues in the series so far, this one is the weakest. Even though it's entertaining, the young Angel/old Angel stuff gets pretty old pretty quick because Bendis doesn't give either one enough of a personality difference. They're basically the same person, nothings changed about the character in all these years. Angel is one of my favorite X-Men and have NO IDEA what his current stance or powers are. I'd think a nice recap page would take care of this. I mean, after all, there's like 594 X-Men books out, you can't expect everyone to know everything. 

The Verdict: I'm gonna say......buy it. But ONLY if you've bought the rest of the run and want to have a complete collection. There's really nothing in this story that NEEDS to be told, other than Bendis needed to do an Angel issue. The shock ending is good, but nothing that won't be gone over is issue #9.