Fourteen weeks into the Legacy initiative, Marvel publishes the 53rd and last of its promoted title launches with Charles Soule and Phil Noto’s Astonishing X-Men #7. This book had been one of our favorites when it was launched at the tail-end of RessurXion because of the smart writing, slick art, and excellent team dynamic, and now, wrapping up the glut of Legacy releases, it serves as a good reminder that the future of Marvel Comics may be far more reliant on the marginalized mutant branch of the superhero tree than the company realized, or would care to admit.
There are a precious few of us longing for the return of Reed, Sue, and the Fantastic Four proper (although Zdarsky and Cheung’s new Marvel Two-in-One is keeping us pretty happy). And there are more than a few of us rolling our eyes every time another top-tier character dies or is otherwise melodramatically shown the door (stay dead, Mar-Vell). But there is likely a very large number of casual post-Claremont fans who have either grown up with the X-Men cartoon, discovered the characters in Bryan Singer’s movies, or have a fond remembrance of X-books of the 90’s who don’t understand why there are so many damn mutant books on the stands, with not a one of them featuring a certain bald telepath.
Growing up X-men was my favorite. I don’t know what it was about those mutant storylines, but I couldn’t get enough. Maybe it had something to do with the set of X-men trading cards that MMDG planted on my bookshelf before I was even old enough to read. Needless to say, when ResurrXion was announced I was over the moon. 
Going to just fanboy out for a second: this comic f’ing ruled. The cover is the Justice League making devil horns in their formation! It’s really refreshing to see an event book be this entertaining while simultaneously having consequences for the rest of the universe. Like, imagine if a Crisis book was actually fun. I can’t give Scott Synder and Greg Capullo enough props for that. The gist is simple: Batman has been preoccupied investigating the source of the mysterious metals that inhabit that DCU, like Hawkman’s Nth metal or the stuff that powers the Court of Owl’s Talons. It seems to have consumed him to a dangerous degree as people are constantly warning him to stay away. But Batman going to be Batman. Legend has it that the Bat-tribe, Barbatos (Grant Morrison’s excellent contribution to Bat-lore), will use the metal to bring in a dark evil. Is Batman inadvertently bringing in this evil or, like always, does he have a plan to stop it? Mysteries and conspiracies involving the magical community of DC make this a who’s who of fun lesser-used DC characters.
The Institute of Idle Time 