As suspected, my newest toy, an Asus Transformer Prime Android tablet, makes a superb e-comic reader. My latest X-book cold turkey spell, induced by a period a few years back when I had trouble getting to Forbidden Planet on a regular basis, is now officially at an end and I've been catching up on the current X-Men: Schism arc and beyond. The Marvel reader app makes it way too easy to buy "just one more issue" but, oddly, there's no shopping basket - you have to purchase each issue individually! I'm also rather amused that my credit card issuer didn't query a bunch of accessories I order for the tablet but did query the purchase of an issue of Astonishing X-Men the same night!


A little to my surprise, Schism appears to be rather more interesting than the usual annual Marvel big event. The Cyclops/Wolverine split over the direction of the X-Men and mutants has been accompanied by lots of foreshadowing of Cyclops getting ever colder and more ruthless and, essentially, going down the same road as Magneto e.g. poster below. Subtle, huh?



Given they are two of my favourite X-Men characters, that all sounds good so I'll definitely be sticking with Uncanny X-Men. Not entirely convinced by Wolverine's walking away because he thinks Cyclops is getting to ruthless (!) and re-establishing a school at the old Xavier Mansion! Not to mention reconciling that position with still being on the X-Force hit squad!

Also a little bemused by the setup for the upcoming Avengers vs X-Men crossovers. So, the Phoenix Force is coming to Earth looking for Hope, the "Mutant Messiah" and, yep, she's another green-eyed redhead. Guess the Phoenix Force has a type...

Rather annoyingly, Claremont's X-Men Forever isn't available on the Marvel store yet though.


Incidentally, thanks to aeshna_uk, I have a t-shirt with the icon design on it!