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Battle of the Atom, the 2013 X-Men event crossover, will see All-New X-Men, X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine & the X-Men tell a story in which the current X-Men have to deal with past versions of themselves – and, uh, also future versions of themselves.

Over the next few months, I’ll be tracking the story with each issue and keeping score on how well the storyline is going.

There will be spoilers below! Although, really, you’re not going to understand what I’m talking about unless you’ve read the issue first.

All New X-Men #16 is by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger, Marte Gracia, and Cory Petit

Boy oh boy, telekinesis was just MADE for Brian Michael Bendis, wasn’t it? This second chapter of the crossover features a bounty of telekinetic double-talk, allowing the writer to offer second and third takes on each situation as they occur in the story.

It’s also a step up from the first chapter, which was designed mainly to get people up to speed on the All-New and Uncanny X-Men teams. Here we finally get to see a wider section of the X-Men in action, as more and more teams start to pile up on each other. But, if there’s any artist able to handle twenty-thirty people in a scene, it’s Stuart Immonen. Immonen steals the issue with his work, giving each character a ‘pop’ from their background, assisted by some careful and bold inking from Wade Von Grawbadger.

Von Grawbadger’s work with Immonen doesn’t get talked enough as much as it should, really – although Immonen’s pencilling is fantastic, it’s Von Grawbadger who gives the characters that feeling of satisfying chunkiness – they feel solid and bounce off each page. He gives them chunky outlines when he needs them to take the foreground and thins down the aspect for characters like Iceman – establishing the different body types and mannerisms of the characters. He’s a perfect fit for the X-Men.

And what a lot of X-Men there are in this issue! This time we have a brief check-in with Cyclops and his Uncanny team, whilst most of the issue focuses in on a three-team drama in which several characters pick an individual side. The main set-piece here is a telekinetic sequence taken fairly shamelessly straight from the pages of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run, as a lengthy discussion and fight are then replayed from a telepathic aspect.

At first it seems like there’s a single discussion going on until Bendis rewinds and replays the scene from Jean Grey’s perspective – revealing that the whole time she’s been telepathically talking to other people in the room, changing the context of the sequence entirely. Whedon held onto this surprise for a few issues, but Bendis establishes and switches the sequence almost immediately. It’s a faster-pace and allows to create a quick, useful conflict between the characters without having to resort to a one-dimensional fight sequence.

It’s pretty obvious that Bendis has been hankering to do this sort of thing for a while, as his All-New X-Men prior to this issue has been full of telepathic tics and quirks. When writing quickfire dialogue, Bendis is hampered by the fact his characters can only say so many words on a panel, within their one motion. Removing that obstacle by writing out thoughts means he can fill each page with as much text as he likes, coating each sequence with side-commentary and exposition.

This is a dream come true for him, you can tell. Luckily the creative team also have the advantage of a few well-planned surprises. The future X-Men team contains one of them, although it’s not quite the surprise you might think it to be. If I can go into an extended analysis of aging, you can see that the Future X-Men team are all around 40 years older than the present day team. With that in mind, the reveal of Jean is not one which returns the version last seen in the hands of Morrison/Pak. Rather, this is the teenage version of Jean, if she stays in the present and ages normally.

Jean’s unveiling is a clever twist for the story, but it also serves to hide what is possibly a more important thing – there’s no future version of Cyclops or Angel amongst the Future X-Men team. Jean is just a distraction from the fact that Bendis has something in mind for his Uncanny X-Men team, and it’s the biggest hook of the issue.

We do check in on that team here, as they recover from Cyclops’ death-experience in the prologue.  Interestingly, the story hasn’t bothered to identify any of these characters aside from Cyclops himself. The book relies on readers already knowing who all the new characters are, and that Emma Frost is now wearing the generic suit which Chris Bachalo gives every female character.  After finally nailing down one trailing part of time travel – Marvel have by now changed the rules of time travel every year for the past fifty years – that team gets a motivation for their next few issues.

That’s a canny trick, isn’t it? Last issue defined the motivation for the team, but Bendis cut away from the scene before actually telling that to the reader. Instead he pops the aftermath scene into this new issue, therefore quickly giving readers a one-issue wait before confirming that, yes, they are all now worried about the new development from before.

Speaking of how efficiently the issue manages to bring in the other books – Rachel Grey has a very brief, but massively substantial, appearance. She runs in after the fight and does EXACTLY what the reader wants her to, and rounds on the new Xorn. Brian Wood’s X-Men have still not appeared as a team, but they are now set up through Rachel’s one-panel outburst and a single dialogue-free reaction panel from Storm. Two words from Jean, and suddenly the next issue has a purpose as well. That’s a remarkably effective use of a page!

That’s what comes across most strongly in the issue. It’s quick and economical. We still haven’t had much beyond Brian Michael Bendis setting up the pieces of the story… but it FEELS like a lot more than that. There’s an effective use of panel-time here which Avengers readers will look upon enviously. Having telepaths present in each issue means Bendis can write overextended thought bubbles for characters – but it also means he can no longer waste the characters’ time. He can’t have character lie to each other, because there are now four or five telepaths around who will call that out.

With the story so far stuck in a room filled with X-Men (there’s still no sign of a villain, unless you count the DJ who makes a TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR dig at Dazzler’s career), the narrative finally has had to force itself forwards, creating some dramatic momentum for Brian Wood to dig into as we head to chapter 3 of the crossover.

More to come…

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Battle of the Atom, the 2013 X-Men event crossover, will see All-New X-Men, X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine & the X-Men tell a story in which the current X-Men have to deal with past versions of themselves – and, uh, also future versions of themselves.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be reading each new issue of the storyline and offering a running commentary on them. Not reviews, particularly – these are more like a series of thoughts which are brought up by each issue.

There will be spoilers below! Although, really, you’re not going to understand what I’m talking about unless you’ve read the issue first.

Battle of the Atom #1 is by Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Cho, Marte Gracia, and Joe Caramagna.

Cover by Art Adams

Additional pages by Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger

X-Men Crossovers are a staple of the franchise. Since the books split into multiple teams and characters way back when, crossovers have made for some of the more inspired and entertaining X-Men stories Marvel have put out. From Inferno to X-Cutioner’s Song and modern crossovers like Messiah Complex, events have served to define the X-Men franchise over the years. Unlike, say, the Avengers, who have mostly been defined by the creator tackling them, the X-Men are more defined by a clear history of ‘big’ storylines.

(Mainly because most X-Men stories are written by the same creator - Chris Claremont)

This has meant that every year Marvel attempt to continue their winning streak with some new ‘big’ storylines for readers. But unusually, we’re currently riding in from a recent string of smaller scale, less successful event stories – Necrosha, Second Coming and Schism all struggled to work on their own merits, and had to be supported by superior tie-in books. Battle of the Atom doesn’t have that luxury, and instead has to bring an entire storyline together – featuring some disparate groups of characters – within the central storyline.

That’s a big ask, especially when you look at just how terrible a job Infinity is doing at making sense without having 2-3 tie-in books assisting the main storyline. On the basis of the first issue, it looks like the X-Office have decided to pare things right down to the basic points. Battle of the Atom #1 doesn’t even bother with Brian Wood’s team of X-Men – this is an introduction purely to Brian Michael Bendis’ X-Men teams, with Kitty Pryde and the All-New X-Men taking the main focus.

Cyclops’ Uncanny X-Men show up too, although strangely there’s almost no conflict whatsoever between the two teams. They get along just fine, are friendly and playful with one another, and nobody calls anybody a jerk. It’s almost disappointing how little real conflict we’ve gotten since Schism ended and the X-Men split into different groups, especially when it means Kitty Pryde hasn’t been able to rant at anybody for months now.

When the final page brings in the Future X-Men, thus putting three generations of X-Men into play… again, there’s no conflict! It’s all very cordial indeed. Very friendly. No tension or sense that this might be epic.

Yet whilst it’s fun for long-term fans to read an X-Men event and see everybody fighting and angry, Bendis’ X-Men run has really been about returning ‘friendliness’ to the mutants. The characters have all dialled back a notch, settled back into themselves, and been allowed to show off just why they were popular to begin with. No more screaming and shouting and melodrama for the time being – Bendis has focused on the basic traits of the characters and reassumed them to fit 2013.

For new readers, this has made for an excellent inroduction to the characters and world of the X-Men, because we get to see their appeal right there on the page… rather than have to remember what the characters once were. That’s the success and failure of this opening issue – the characters are revived and upbeat… but at the same time, they’re also disengaged from a sense of danger. There’s no threat.

The last page revealing the Future X-Men doesn’t feel ominous either, although maybe that’s because it’s been talked about so endlessly in interviews and solicitations. Really, the main shock comes when you see what the Future X-Men team are WEARING, because lordy if that isn’t some of the worst costume designing since Polaris. The team are in beige, for the most part, with shawls and hoods and bland designs dominating them as a group.

They look absolutely terrible. It’s also worth noting that, in keeping with the goal of making everything simple for new readers, not one of the characters is new. These are all existing characters. There’s no Cable or Bishop or Shard appearing for the first time here. These are established characters, or the children of established characters, aged and changed very slightly.

For all that this is billed as a major event, there’s no sign that the writers want to shock or stun readers with revelations. It instead feels very low-key, simple, and one-note in the opening issue. So really, it’s an issue which completely introduces the key idea of Bendis’ X-Men – that the characters are enjoying themselves for the first time in years, despite everything else that’s happening to them. They’re individuals again rather than a minority group working together on their cause.

At the same time the character-driven writing means that the storyline feels a little linear, and a little too easy. Nothing in the opening issue suggests any reason why the entire crossover couldn’t just see various X-Men sitting in their breakfast room, discussing their differences over coffee.

And that’s probably why Marvel decided, after reading the issue, to release both Battle of the Atom AND All New X-Men #16 on the same day. There’s only one scene in this opening issue, midway through the story, which has any real sense of drama to it – and then the story skips ahead in time so it doesn’t have to resolve or address that drama quite yet.

But! All-New X-Men #16 DOES address it. And picks the story up considerably, in fact. So on that note – more to come..