Oh man, time will never be the same.
What They Say:
The hunt is on! Can Bethany and her allies from the Future find Nathan, Jazz and Tony before the time stream is changed irreversibly? Or is that something that SHOULD happen? History itself hangs in the balance.
The Review:
After an issue focused entirely on Toni, Next Men shakes things up a bit this time around by spreading its love amongst several characters. And the main binding focus of it all is within the future time where Bethany has been working with the small group of people to deal with the changes to the time stream. What they’ve discovered is interesting in that while Bethany ran a whole lot of things out of the building, it’s managed to cocoon them from those changes that have happened because of sending people to the past. Most of the Next Men haven’t made too much of an impact, such as Jasmine and even Nathan when you get down to it, but others like Toni and perhaps Jack have made changes. Toni’s are the most significant as we saw in the previous issue with her attempts at warning Lincoln about the assassination and her attempt at stopping it which went awry at the last minute.
And that only went awry because Gil and his team arrived to stop her from doing so. But even that has Gil wondering if what they’re doing is the right thing and to the surprise of the reader, at least me, they opt to let Toni go forward with her plan and wink out of there with her staying behind. It’s a really neat alternate history that we get to see explored over a page or two as Toni’s life with Lincoln being saved is dealt with. It’s a huge what-if moment and it’s treated well, showing numerous changes that occurred across the nation decades earlier than they would have otherwise and really bringing something new to the table. It infuriates some in the future team that can’t believe that Gil did this, but then again, we learn that he was the one that sent Kirkland back to assassinate Hilltop all that time ago and they saw how badly botched that went. This could change things even more significantly than that in a much different way.
The issue does cover a lot of other ground as well, moving beyond just Toni’s story and what Bethany is trying to process in the future. The rescue of Jasmine is well handled as it gets her back up to speed and shows the power and ability of those from this far flung future date have as they restore her from the near death’s door state she was in. Finding Nathan is much harder since he was thrown about in time again with nor ecords shown of him, but a neat and realistic suggestion came along that worked, which lead to a fun little excursion for both Jasmine and Bethany. Both of them taking to the idea that they have to be proactive again and figure that this future time is their new home now has them wanting to get their own hands dirty, especially if it involves resucing their friend. Nathan has definitely been put through the wringer with this storyline and things are wrapped up a bit too pat for my tastes with him here, but you can feel the rush to finish out things quickly here before this particular volume ends.
Release Notes:
This comiXology edition of Next Men comes with the main cover as released with the print edition and no other extras.
In Summary:
Next Men continues to try and clean up the mess that came from other Bethany’s plans to deal with the betrayal placed upon her and it’s moving at a good clip here. I’m glad that more focus was given to what Toni had to go through and the changes she wrought, but I also wonder how much more could have been done with Nathan’s arc as well if it had been given the time to really be explored. There’s a lot going on in this issue which is similar to how much of the series has run and that’s a good thing since you get to see several characters dealt with and a lot of information getting spread out in a good way. Next Men continues to have a very solid run here and the little twists and turns continues to make it a heck of a lot of fun, giving you the kind of journey you wish would never end.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
