X-Men Forever-NCCW

Have you ever wondered what would have happened had Chris Claremont not left the X-Men when he did?  Claremont is arguably the most awesome X-Men writer on one of the best runs of the comic, with some of the greatest story lines.  I am talking Phoenix, Dark Phoenix, and Days Future Past here.  This guy shaped the X-Men.  So what happens if he picks up the book where he left off?  The answer to that is kind of  X-Men Forever.

I say kind of because Claremont's tale is obviously influenced by the twenty years of story line that came after.  Not that he is following the same story, but that he is reacting to what other writers did with the characters.  It is a pretty big challenge if you think about it.  He had to reinvent the team that he had already reinvented and then left for twenty years.  In the meantime, they had been reinvented about twice every year and had writers that did great things and writers that messed stuff up (Grant Morrison).  I mean there were retcons on retcons.  The X Universe is a hot mess.  X-Men Forever was not a retcon but an alternate timeline, so it gets to ignore all that crap, but has to be different from it.

The story in Vol. 1 was okay with a very surprising death.  It is hard to make sense of what you are reading and rewind and start again at the fall of Asteroid M.  It seems like he wanted  to tie in all of his story lines as we have references to the Phoenix and the Morlocks.  I will probably check out Vol. 2 in the future.