Why was the bullet magic in the first place? Who knows.

I’ll have to read this whole arc again, because the glacial pace didn’t help the storyline’s cohesion. The ending seemed to be haphazardly plotted, with some good character bits interspersed to distract from the illogic of what was going on.

I sincerely hope Joss Whedon is not allowed to ruin any other Marvel titles in the future.

It seems that certain writers are married to their choosen genre and can never leave it. Joss Whedon is terribly at Science Fiction (Yes, I HATED FIREFLY). Neil Gaiman is also bad at Science Fiction because his “Eternals” miniseries was very poor; although that could have been the fault of Joe Quesada’s Editorial meddling which nearly ruined Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men.

As far as I am concerned “New X-Men” by Grant Morrison is still the best X-Men has been in decades. It has yet to be equalled or surpassed.

Even worse, the “timeshadows” idea that grounds the prophecy stuff explicitly stated that it was a technological, not a magical forecasting method.

They had something in the way of magic I guess if they have some sort of prophecy system, but it wasn’t really a prophecy.. so do they have magic?

The only point of this magical protection was a massive contrivance to make sure there was no one who could stop the bullet. It’s like the opposite of Deus Ex Machina. Weak sauce.

Now if you didn’t guess that something was going to happen to either Peter or Kitty by the end of joss’ run you haven’t been paying attention at all.

Somewhere along the way he learned that death = profound. So he plays the death card every chance he gets. (I know she’s not dead dead, but let’s face it she’s been taken out of play for the forseeable future.)

I don’t know how much of the impact was ruined by the lateness, but still knowing Kitty was pretty much doomed soured the whole run for me.

Joss is starting to bore me. He gets a good line of dialogue once or twice an issue, but his plots got weaker and weaker and more and more predictable.

I’m glad his comics time is almost over for marvel frankly.

You mean “hiccup”?

Whatever.

For your enjoyment:
[blockquote]
Top 12 Things Kitty Pryde Says When She Comes Back

12. That Obama is seriously courting the Jewish vote!
11. Seriously, is there a power Sage doesn’t have?
10. You do know I’ve been pals with Franklin Richards since Fantastic Four vs X-Men, right?
09. Superboy Prime was a comics geek in the 80′s. 80′s comics geeks LOVE me. One wall punch later….
08. Bullet? Breakworld? I’ve been working with Nick Fury on this whole Skrull thing. Sounds like someone’s team had been Secretly Invaded.
07. One of my ex’s is really close with a guy who knows this lonely god with a time traveling blue box….
06. and then Wanda said “No More Whedons”. . .
05. What part of “my best friend is a demon sorceress” do you not understand?
04. What part of “my girl friend is a cosmic avatar” do you not understand?
03. I used the focused totality of my phasing power to get out of the rocket and dumbass story.
02. Someone named Ellen Page called up someone named JoeQ and said “What the hell is this crap? Fix it now!”
and
01. “Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am fire! And Life Incarnate! Now and forever….I am LOLCAT![/blockquote]

I dunno about that one — I’ve been to a bunch of sites and thus far Brian’s the only person who seems to have worked out what was going on with the magic stuff. And even there, I detect a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc in the explanation.

Again, I suspect that this is a serious clarity and plotting issue, since there was simply no setup for the idea in the story or the issue and it’s presented rather obliquely when it does happen.

(No, I haven’t spent $75 on disappointment; I read ‘em in the store, because I’m a cad).

I think Collossus’s Breakworld showdown is the perfect expression of that character and his relationship to power. I was thrilled with the Spider-Man dialogue and while there was certainly the danger for Spidey or the FF to pull the rug out from under the X-Men in this story, I think it served quite well to show that this story was big enough to warrant the involvement of the whole Marvel Universe… and in a sense it removes this book from the sense of isolation from the braoder Marvel continuity that’s plagued it from the beginning.

Kitty’s farewell was not only touching but also fairly original from a plot standpoint. I think Whedon’s brought Kitty back into the spotlight and given her a strong enough voice that he’s earned the right to give her a send-off like this. Especially because he’s left the door fairly wide open to a return. She’s lost to the X-Men for now, but she’s not dead, and she’ll be back as soon as any writer with a decent, cosmically twinged imagination wants to bring her back.

For example, compare Whedon’s several-years-long relationship with Kitty and the dramatic, slow-burn climax he gave to her departure, with Brubaker’s one-panel, completely unceremonious kill-off of Banshee in the very first X-Men issue he wrote.

This was well-done. And I’m curious to see what Ellis and Bianchi bring to the title. Not gushing about the title in general, ’cause I can think of 10 X-runs off the top of my head that I enjoyed more, overall, but this was a good finish.

I know a lot of people love Joss’ writing, but I don’t, not anymore. I’m especially tired of hearing people (writers, not posters here) proclaim how they love a character, only to perform hatchet jobs on them, kill them off, or otherwise pretty much invalidate their claimed love for said character.

All that work in bringing Kitty back, only to “almost” kill her off (with a magic planet-busting, magic-proof bullet — which ISN’T able to prevent someone from phasing it?), but certainly to remove her from the books for quite some time. Why? All, IMHO, for shock value. Nothing was really gained (IMHO) with this storyline, certainly nothing that was worth writing Kitty out (or in bringing Colossus back, either).

Sorry for all the negativity. I WANTED to like this run, I did like the early parts, but more and more it reads like shameless ripoffs (Kitty’s stance rising from the water deliberately evoking Wolverine doing the same decades earlier), terrible resurrections (Colossus), and simply terrible delays. I don’t know, maybe it WILL read better in trade, but I’m glad to see him off the book.

Ugh. Just terrible, IMHO.

In all honestly, no disrespect is intended to anyone who DID enjoy the book. I wish I could have.

Take it and run.

I’d still disagree, if only because taken on its own it seems to be yet another comic in which a generic plot — and, I think, a rather dodgy one at that — is artificially inflated with a main character death. Add in the pricing and what, based on responses here and elsewhere, are at the very least some serious clarity problems, and I think this is a rather poor buy and read.

Doesn’t mean I’d recommend the series as a whole (in fact, I think I would not), but I thought this issue was good.