Ok, I just got this one and there's a problem with this.
In theory this should be about Sentinels and the first real victory that Bishop's new team can make. This is a perfectly good story to tell. But it's not that. This book had one cool thing going for it a few months back, Kirkman hinted at a ****load of cool stories just around the bend. He did that for three months straight and then did a bad Morlock story which progressed the cooler story of Bishop's New X-Men.
Now we get to the cooler story and....now we're hinting at Beast, Shadow King, and Phoenix again. This makes it 7 months in a row of moving forward all these stories....as slowly as possible.
Personally, I don't care about Shadow King or Phoenix so dragging these storylines out for this long is something that isn't all that grand to me. Beast's story was interesting in degrees. To me the stories I want to see involve Bishop's new team and a story or two of the X-Men at the school running it as a school.
By having all these stories moved forward at once...you end up robbing the current story of its power and focus. Kirkman did this in the Morlock story but I couldn't care about the Morlock story then.
Hints are great but these are not hints. We got brood-looking Shadow King minions appearing out of nowhere and freaking out Storm. We have a cheese cake Jean attacked by a flaming girl (although the Goblins fought it back so I guess they represent her sanity?). Beast breaks out and witnesses things.
...
It's supposed to be interesting but we're just getting snapshots here. A lot happens in this issue but we don't care because once your getting into one storyline Kirkman switches over to another storyline.
Look at this break down.
Pages 1-3 are the Beast/Legacy Virus storyline.
4-7 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.
8 is the Shadow King storyline.
9-14 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.
15-17 are the Phoenix storyline with two panels of the Beast/Legacy Virus storyline.
18-22 are the Sentinel/New X-Men storyline.
Clearly the focus is on the Sentinel and New X-Men storylines but by putting these other storylines in you take away from this story AND the other stories(which is bad since the Shadow King and Phoenix storylines are about the same: Hot Powerful Mutant Girl is possessed by some other force and they're seeing things which tell them to give in and putting them in the same issue shows this too damn much.)
I want to know more about the Beast and the Ultimate Legacy Virus, I truly do. However, by staling it like this by having Beast appear once in a while and do little things makes the story feel like it's not going anywhere; that it's spinning its wheels.
I mean, truly, I imagine the next arc should be Phoenix. We've had this storyline going since Mark Millar AND Kirkman's already done his little update on it. We've seen the Hellfire Club come back, Phoenix warn everyone that once Jean turns 20 it takes over, met the Shi'ar Church, seen Jean's birthday come and go, and we've had to deal with little hints and updates since Kirkman took over the book.
THE STORY IS READY! We have the foundation set for a big epic Phoenix story that GOES PLACES. The Phoenix storyline shows my fears about Kirkman's plans. That we'll get all these hints and once he starts focusing on one story...he'll divert it every other page to show us an upcoming arc and by doing so it'll drag on without any resolution.
I loved Aftermath and Cliffhangers because it showed me what's coming up...but I don't want that every month, every issue. I want a story which can hint or build to another arc...but not so bluntly and not so often.
We're supposed to be focusing on Sentinels which has a lot on its plate right now. We have the Twins and Trask working together...why? We have Pyro who's allegiance is now being called into question. We have the Mutant Liberation Front which is being hounded by the Sentinels and has some connection to Pyro (Pyro's in fact connected to the X-Men, the Mutant Liberation Front, and the Morlocks). We have Stryfe running around without an idea of what it is he's planning.
All of that is tied directly to the Sentinel storyline...PLEASE FOCUS ON THAT! There's a story in there! By progressing everything forward at the same time you get issues like this one where a lot happens...but it's a lot of little things. It's small movements forward without really doing anything in terms of story.
2/5.
Did I mention the Cheesecake Jean? It looks nice but...
EDIT:
Also, a lot of the Sentinel pages are just fighting...and only once is it a character moment. The rest of the time it's just Wolverine cutting off another Sentinel head. And speaking just on that fact, let's say I've never read a Sentinel story before and I've never seen Wolverine cut off Sentinel heads...it's still not good looking. It doesn't capture any awe in its reader. Wolverine doesn't really have a cool looking power. It's really just a guy with knives.