Quick Hits: All-New X-Men #4, 5 (Marvel)

Another of my favorite launches from 2012, this is Brian Michael Bendis finally doing the X-Men book he all but promised in House of M.

The fourth issue pushes the strange arc of the current and conflicted mutants meeting their own past selves.  That's all well and good.  It advances thing enough so we can reach:

The fifth issue, in which Bendis really gets to write for both Jean Grey and Beast, the two biggest beneficiaries of this series not named Cyclops.  Jean is the most fascinating character ever to be sacrificed to the needs of a death in comics that somehow stayed pretty permanent.  This is her second chance and Bendis knows it, and that's reason enough to look at this whole story as something other than a gimmick.  She's here mostly to help Beast try to figure out a way to not die, which is odd because if I were writing it I'd be trying to find the loophole that would help Jean survive.

Both issues are illustrated by Stuart Immonen, who is a favorite and whose absence from some of the following issues is excuse enough for me to lose track of the series for a while.  Still, as worth checking out as anything else I endorse wholeheartedly.