In some ways, this is like coming home for me in terms of X-Men. Though I started reading X-Men during John Romita Jr.'s run, Marc Silvestri's work was some of my favorite on the book at the time, and though I started with "The Trial of Magneto," it didn't take me long to discover "Days of Future Past" or for that to become a favorite story. In that time, however, Silvestri's style (and my tastes) have changed, and while the art is solid, it's not really among my favorites of Morrison's run so far. The story is something I'll have to judge when it's finished, because I think it's either going to be an amalgamation of weird ideas that ends up making little sense or a clever culmination of all the plot points up to this point. I'm hoping for the latter and honestly halfway expecting the former, because while there are a lot of neat ideas in this first issue of the arc, there are also some big questions raised that I don't expect to see answered.
150 years in the future, the X-Men exist in a world shattered and unrecognizable, battling a seemingly unstoppable foe. It's not unlike the premise of "Days of Future Past," except that instead of the danger coming from humans, it comes from the mutants, one that the X-Men had considered a friend. This fits in nicely with Morrison's shift of focus on New X-Men, when the book was less about the labored "fighting to save a world that hates and fears them" and more about the difficulties of integration, so that the heroes of this piece can be humans as well as mutants, and even one former mutant-killing robot gets to wear a white hat.
There are some troubles with this premise, of course. I have trouble buying into the big personality transformation of the villain, and while I could be made to believe it, I wonder if the four issue length means Morrison will skip over that explanation and just expect us to go with it. Ditto for the notion that 150 years in the future, the X-Men haven't changed all that much. There are reasonable explanations for the long life of the villain or Wolverine, and certainly the disembodied nature of the new Professor Xavier makes sense... but why are the Stepford Cuckoos still around? Why does Beak's grandson have exactly the same powers and (forgiving the artistic license resulting from a change in artists) look? These are minor considerations, but they tug at the suspension of disbelief for this reader.
On the art side of things, Marc Silvestri and his various inkers do a decent job, but I can't help but recoil to see some of the '90s Image style returning to this book and to popularity. The scratchy ink lines that are the defining aspect of the style annoy the hell out of me, and everyone seems to have the same sleek, impossibly stretched and well-toned body shape, disappointing when compared to the more realistic proportions of Phil Jimenez, Igor Kordey or Frank Quitely. Still, Silvestri does a great job on the technology, especially the damaged Sentinel and the morphing robot E.V.A., and his hordes of 'crawlers have a nicely sinister look to them as well. In addition, while the backgrounds do tend to fall away, when the work is put into them (as with the first shot of The Manhattan Crater) they look terrific, and the action sequences are equally strong.
All in all, while I have enough gripes and nervousness that this first issue doesn't wow me, I still expect to be quite satisfied with the finished products. The flaws and ups and downs in New X-Men pale beside Morrison's accomplishment of rehashing old story concepts and villains while still making the book feel fresh, new and exciting for the first time in years. "Here Comes Tomorrow" may wind up being an epilogue that doesn't have as much to do with the big story arc Morrison has done on New X-Men, but my guess, especially given the "150 Years Earlier" sequence at the end of this book, is that he'll be providing a wrap-up that sort of gives his final statement on the characters and leaves things nice and clean for the next writer to play with.
