Sexiest (female) comic book character: Magick or Psylocke? I'd have difficulty answering this question. I was exposed to Magick at a much younger age, but Psylocke's "Eastern ninja thing" was more in line with both the kind of movies I was watching in the 80s and the kind of women I was fantasizing over.
But I've digressed before I've even started. I was going to discuss Brian Michael Bendis' Battle of the Atom, wasn't I? I should probably do that instead of sidestepping into the historically hot women of comic books.
First, a bit of background. Battle of the Atom is one of those "interim" X-men comics that follow the years in which "the X-men were important at Marvel" and Jonathan Hickman's House of X and Powers of X, which are regarded as a return to form. This isn't to say that Bendis' work on the characters is bad or irrelevant, just that these "interim years" were disappointing for many fans, and that there was an impression that the mutants were being sidelined in favor of other, non-mutant characters that Marvel Studios had the rights to.
There was also a feeling that the X-men "couldn't catch a break," and yes, reading Battle of the Atom one gets a sense of this. Just thinking of the deaths and upheavals that came before this series, yeah, it was a rough time to be a mutant.
In Battle of the Atom the X-men have split into two factions after the death of Charles Xavier. One faction is led by Wolverine, the other by Cyclops. At some point in the recent past these two factions were joined by the original X-men, who were transported to the future by Beast. To these original X-men are then added a group of future X-men, who want the original X-men to return to their own time period so that everyone involved can avoid a catastrophic future. Oh, and there's yet another group of X-men that show up, also from the future, to oppose the first group of future X-men, who may or may not be the good guys. Confused yet? I was.
But the problem with this comic book series isn't really the confusion it creates, but rather the ending, which just seems to represent a form of writer's block on the author's part. After wading through so many iterations of the X-men, some of whose interactions are fun, one expects a grand finale, but this grand finale never arrives. Instead the villain overexerts him/herself, and we're left with a series of epilogues that don't really add anything to the saga.
It's a comic book half full of good art and half full of mediocre art. The story just barely holds together. You could read it I suppose, but there are better comic books out there.
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