All New X-Men #12

Written by Dennis Hopeless

Penciled by Mark Bagley
Cover by Mark Bagley
Published Aug 10, 2016

   The X-Men are trying to get back to normal, and during some rare downtime, Warren takes off to Milan for Fashion Week. Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend Laura just finds herself wanting to be alone. Noticing that she's having a rough go, the still healing and wheelchair bound Cyclops has something for her that might do just the trick. A dossier of solo missions, all over analyzed and risk-grouped by the incomparable young Beast. She takes him up on it, along with his secret weapon - the time traveling Nightcrawler minion, Pickles.
   First stop is Brazil, where an environmental terriost offshoot of Daredevil's rivals the Hand has been training. Only problem is that once Wolverine leaps into ferocious action, she finds them all already defeated. Next on the list is Toronto, where sightings of Mole Man and subterranean monster attacks have terrified the locals. But there again, she finds the threat already neutralized. Next up, Cameron Hodge has hijacked a truck and is vacuuming up terrigen to weaponize M-Pox, but again she finds the truck crushed and the baddies tied up. Finally she hits up the goblin queen in Florida and she's finally able to unleash her claws. She starts slashing and hacking, not being morally abashed because killing demons is apparently totally cool for the Weapon X clone. Suddenly a fiery explosion interrupts her and as the smoke clears, she sees former old flame (pardon the pun) Warren Worthginton bathed in fire.
   Obviously not at fashion week, they immediately begin arguing. Wolverine was only trying to be a normal teenager for him and he tells her she's terrible at normal. He reminds her how reckless she is and she reminds him about his assault on the Blob. While he was being so judgemental to her, he he is doing the same thing. He tells her he can't help it now and she doesn't know what that feels like. She tells him she knows exactly what it feels like and they immediately start making out.
   The issue ends with the demons asking their queen if they should put themselves back together and take out the X-men duo while they're distracted, and she tells them no, not right now. Let the kiddies have their fun. The next page reveals whom they're talking to - the dreaded Inferno version of Madelyne Pryor. And with that, we're left to be continued.
   I've read a lot of reviews of this particular issue and they all gravitate to one point - Dennis Hopeless and his forced youth lingo is annoying, not believable, and distracting. While I'm aware we're dealing with a young group of X-Men here, it's irritating to be force fed this teeny soap opera bullshit that doesn't really do much to help out the storyline. I don't remember Chris Claremont or Scott Lobdell trying to lather up the 80's/90's version of "LOL" and nobody needs it here either. He's done a good job up to this point but there's some red flags. I give it a 7/10 and I hope he has some sort of plan before this series comes to a close...

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Until next time, thanks so much for reading...