Marvel Now Rankings Part 5: 21-19

The fifth part of the Marvel Now Rankings, from 21 to 19.

These Marvel NOW books are where the list begins to get harder to rank. From here on out the books are all good and if any of them pique your interest you should go and read them.

21. All-New X-Men: Written by Brian Michael Bendis, with art by Stuart Immonen

The X-Men are not very happy about Scott turning evil and running around with Magneto in Uncanny X-Men. Beast comes up with an idea to fix this; he’ll go back in time and bring the original X-Men to the future to show Scott how he has changed for the worse. Eventually Beast convinces the younger version of himself, before he turns blue and hairy, along with young versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel and Iceman, to come to the present. Beast’s plan doesn’t work out as he thinks and after seeing how messed up the future is the past X-Men decide to stay in the present and help out. Even though nobody wants them to and them being there makes the timeline really confusing.

This book was unexpectedly good. While it started off confusing with all of the time travel stuff, it really hits it’s stride as soon as they started focusing on their own stories and how the team dynamics change because of the new world around them. The only problem with this book is that young Jean Grey is annoying. She is constantly abusing her powers and reading everyone’s minds all the time. She outs young Iceman as gay, something that she should have talked to him about rather than blurting to the entire group. Her attitude changes near the end of Marvel Now and helps make the book better.

I would highly recommend this to anybody who wants to start reading the X-Men, it explains all of the current day stuff easily and sets these familiar characters out into a world that is completely different then what they are used to.

From Marvel Comics. Partial Cover of Uncanny Avengers Issue 7

20. Uncanny Avengers: Written by Rick Remender, with art by John Cassady

After the last Marvel event, Avengers vs. X-Men, the world had started to distrust mutants again. Captain America assembles a new team of Avengers that will have classic Avengers along with some X-Men to help show the public that not all mutants are bad and they can be heroes too. He chooses Havok, who is Cyclops’ brother to lead the team, along with Rogue, Sunfire and Wolverine, who was already a trusted Avenger.

The Scarlet Witch, Thor, Wasp and Wonder Man, round out the team and the wide cast helps to build a lot of unique relationships with many character integration for the first time together. The team then goes on some great adventure, stopping some very famous Marvel villains such as Red Skull and Apocalypse.

This book is very good throughout, but it does become very convoluted because of an alternate reality storyline that plays out near the end. The book also introduces an important plot point with the Red Skull that is not explained in this book, but in a later iteration of the Uncanny Avengers team almost five years after the first story.

This book comes highly recommended to fans of the Avengers or X-Men who want to learn more about the other team but not go to far out of their comfort zone.

From Marvel Comics. Partial Cover of Ant-Man (2015) Issue 2

19. Ant-Man (2015): Written by Nick Spencer, with art by Mark Brooks

This five-issue miniseries written by the guy that would later turn Captain America into a Nazi, starts his run on Ant-Man. Scott Lang is down on his luck and moves across the country so he can be closer to his daughter. That’s pretty much it. There might be some bits with a man in a bear costume who confused Scott for one of the other Ant-Men but that isn’t too important to the overall story.

This was just a fun book. Very simple premise, good art and a fun family driven center to the story.

I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the Ant-Man movie, because this book feels a lot like that movie.

This part started off the good books but the next part will involve some more time travel and 2 classic Marvel characters getting character shifts, although one might have shifted a lot more than the other.