All New X-Men #7

Written by Dennis Hopeless

Penciled by Mark Bagley

Cover by Nolan Woodard

Published Mar 30, 2016

   The team gathers in their massive mobile command trailer thing in Paris, trying to put together what happened to Cyclops and how Toad was able to get one over on all of them. Idie googles him and they watch a series of YouTube videos he made documenting his descent into drunken madness. Meanwhile in the catacombs, Cyclops comes to after being strapped to an alter and listening to Toad discuss his plan aloud to murder him. He knows his optic blasts will collapse the area on top of them, but any ideas he can think out rationally are rendered null after Toad knocks his visor off his face with a whiskey bottle.

   Back at the trailer, the X-Men discuss using their mobile cerebro unit to track Cyclops once he uses his optic blast. But they might be too late. It appears Toad thinks that by killing him, it will change the timeline for the better. He has no choice and fires a blast at the ceiling, crumbling the cave around them but signaling to Beast where to find him. They set out on foot while Cyclops drags his injured leg through the catacombs trying to escape.

   Toad realizes he's gonna have to act quickly if he wants to kill Scott, so he follows the blood and empties a kerosene container down the path he'd crawled down. The cave explodes and crumbles under the X-Men's feet. Toad realizes that no timeline has changed and he remorsefully yells out a 'What Have I Done", while a saddened Beast throws his smartphone at the wall because it failed to find their teammate in time.

   Decent issue but a step down from the last. Don't know why it took all issue to build up one plot point, but it was nice not being so busy with it. Nice artwork and I still enjoy the original X-team. But kinda meh nonetheless. 6/10.

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Until next time, thanks for reading!