The strength of All New X-Men lies in scenes like the one that kicks off this issue - a heart to heart between the adult Cyclops, and a young Jean Grey. There’s obvious dramatic potential in having these two characters in a room, but that boon can just as easily be a hinderance in the wrong hands. There’s a romantic history between the two characters, one of which has experienced it all while the other has just begun trying to navigate the choppy waters of Teen Feelings. The easy thing, the lazy thing to do would be to rest on those laurels and give Cyclops all the power in this scene. He is the adult, the experienced party. Bendis doesn’t play things that way. Instead, he gives both a sense of equality. They’re both confused, but neither knows what they are doing. It’s a scene that is just as sweet as it is awkward. A quick drive-by from Kitty Pryde makes things quite clear: there will be nothing creepy happening with this relationship. Cyclops takes her direction without question as Kitty is clearly the person with the strongest handle on what both parties need from their unavoidable relationship as… something resembling peers. Separate entities, for sure.

The issue is rendered beautifully by Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger, who have quickly become one of my favourite art teams in comics. Their look is quite slick and classical, providing just a touch of the unbelievable within some very human looking forms. Bonus points for rendering teens who actually look like teens, to match Bendis’ pitch perfect dialogue. While I often drop in and out of the bigger Marvel and DC books as needed as I traipse through the mountain full of reading I do for the shop each and every week, this is a book that I come back to time and time again without fail, and it’s the strength of the creators involved that do it. The confrontation promised on the final page of this issue just makes the wait for the next issue all the harder.

The things we do for the love of comics.