X-Men: First to Last
With the end of Marvel‘s Avengers vs. X-Men looming on the horizon and all of this week’s new series reveals (check out comicbookresources.com, newsarama.com, or bleedingcool.com for details), I’m excited about the future. In particular, I’m excited about the Days of Future Now, or what has been re-titled All-New X-Men.
I’m not excited because of the writer, anyone who reads me regularly knows I’m not Brian Michael Bendis‘ greatest fan, but about the concept. So, to get myself ready, I picked up Christopher Yost‘s X-Men: First to Last.
I picked First to Last because I believe it to be the closest story we have to an integration of the original X-Men team and the current one. The story even specifically centers around the two main mutants who currently wield the Pheonix Force, Cyclops and Emma Frost, and the original one, Jean Grey.
While All-New X-Men will have the original team coming into the present day, First to Last showed the reader the stark contrast of the original Cyclops and the present one. I think that is where this story is really focused, just as AVX is really a story about Cyclops‘ journey as well.
If I were to pick a main character for the X-Men, it would definitely be Cyclops. This is his story. It is about how he has grown, how he has changed. How he has faced all the crap that the world has given him and how he has tried and failed to rise above it. We will see him fail. Absolute power corrupts absolutely (and all that jazz).
The X-Men are a group of kids that mature into people they don’t necessarily like. I think we are going to see that exemplified in All-New X-Men. We get a taste of it in First to Last. Pick it up and give it a whirl. While you’re at it, if you want, pick up some of the Marvel Essentials or Marvel Masterworks that feature the original X-Men, that and the X-Men: First Class trades. I think we should all take this opportunity to prepare ourselves for what comes next.
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