The first issue was total shit, but this issue was actually pretty good. I liked it all around. I was the interior artwork was just a tad darker, but overall pretty nice.

The art was ok, the rest, just awful.

Not sure what there is to be excited about. I mean, the artwork is pretty good, but not amazing. The gore is over the top and un-appealing. Works better in the black-and-white frames of The Walking Dead. Full color it just becomes overwashed everything doused in tomatoes. The writing was just poor. Nothing I liked about it. The story felt very uninspired. I feel like it was just Robert catering to an idea he had with Scott Gimple. And not a very entertaining one, just a gruesome one. Bleh. No thanks. more

The art is uneven, Jean Grey half the time looks like she has a man's body, I just don't understand what's going on there. The dialogue is about the most awful garbage I've ever seen. I mean, seriously, stop and read it out loud. Read the interaction between Logan and Jean and see how awful it is. It makes no sense, she just comes off like a jerk.

The story is about as boring as possible, the artwork is bad, why was this printed? Just so we could get that, "Tastes like mustard and bigotry!" line? Oh, such witty dialogue. Is Dan Slott one of the few decent writers left at Marvel??? more

This book tastes like virtue signaling and bad writing.

I usually have pretty low expectations for annual issues, and Tom Taylor managed to live down to my expectations in every way. The thing most people will focus on is the terrible hot dog line. I think back to the classic 70's and 80's books written by Chris Claremont (the all time best X-Men writer) and how he dealt with bigotry. He didn't bring it up in every single issue but he did touch on it fairly frequently. Instead of portraying regular people as cartoonish bigots, Claremont would often write them as conflicted about their feelings towards mutants. They would express genuine concerns about their own safety or the safety of their families in a world with mutants. By the end of the story they would often have reassessed their view of mutants, usually after seeing the X-Men do something ennobling. Claremont knew that his readers were mostly kids and he wrote simple moral parables for them. In contrast Tom Taylor writes for an audience of self righteous adults to whom he relentlessly conveys that he is a good and virtuous person.

The usual X-Men Red criticisms apply. The art makes all of the women look ugly. Jean looks like a forty two year old stripper. The characters have no individual personality. Honey Badger is awful.

The line about the Phoenix holding Jean back makes absolutely no sense. I don't expect every X-Men writer to be an expert, but for a book that lists four different editors and assistant editors you would think somebody could spot huge mistakes like this. more