Okay Jason Aaron, you and me need to talk. You are like that super amazing gymnast or ice skater who just can't stick the landing.
Spoiler warning here.
So X-Men Schism is about a huge philosophical divide between Cyclops and Wolverine. Its a great thing to create a Schism over, its perfectly in character. It basically boils down to Cyclops thinking that using teenage mutants as soldiers is okay, and Wolverine thinking its not.
Cyclops who was basically forged into a teenage soldier himself by Professor X, who has lived his entire life based on the ideas of a man who made him and his peers into student soldiers is totally in character to have his students fight....or he would be under most circumstances.
Heres the problem. The issue has a giant Sentinel attacking Utopia, and all of the adult X-Men are off the island. The students stand beside Cyclops to fight the Sentinel, and Wolvie comes out and says no, no more kids fighting.
Cyclops has made tough decisions that have put these kids in danger before, but only when its been to make sure these kids had a better chance of surviving. This isn't about them surviving, this isnt about anything but defending Utopia. Why is this a problem? It's a problem because Utopia was just a measure Scott took to help the mutant race survive. It was never the END, it was just a means to an end of keeping mutants safe.
Cyclops putting mutant lives in danger just to save this piece of rock, it makes no sense. They've rebuilt the mansion after a million attacks, they have other places they can go, if the Sentinel is just attack Utopia, Scott putting mutant lives in danger just to defend it doesn't in anyway go with the man who has spent every waking moment trying to insure the survival of mutant kind.
Now you could tell this story if you told it in Uncanny, if you took some time to develop Scott becoming invested in the idea of Utopia as a nation, but that hasn't happened here. Instead Aaron has put the cart before the horse, and totally missed what it is Cyclops has been fighting for since M-Day. This is a huge problem, its really sad, because the philosophical point that the Schism is happening over is really valid, its just sad that it had to happen in such a big stupid forced way.
It gets worse though. Wolverine tells Scott he's going to blow up the island rather than let Cyclops have the kids fight. This is odd. Its odd from a logistics standpoint of how he did it, and its kinda odd from the perspective of "Why would Logan have prepared this?" So Scott and Logan then having a shouting match over whether or not to blow up Utopia, and Scott, out of NOWHERE tells Wolverine that Jean never loved him, and then its on.
So yeah, Schism has a great kernel of an idea, a lot of neat shit going on it, and some really valid points. It also has Scott Summers being totally off mission for no good reason.
The real problem is Jason Aaron is coming out of this writing Wolverine not X-Men. Thats no knock on the man, he does a lot of god work here, but there's obviously a lot of nuances of the way the X-Men work these days that he either missed or just glossed over. If they would have had him write some actual X-men for a while, let him find the voice for these characters before he had to write an EVENT with them, I think this would have come out better, but as it is, its a lot of clumsy flailing, with a couple solid hits in there.
Generation Hope 11 however, is amazing.
This issue takes place just a little bit before the climax of Schism 4. It starts off dealing with the fallout from last issue. Idie has just killed a bunch of Hellfire club goons to save the lives of many of the X-Men, and Transonic has some serious issues with robbing the innocence of a 14 year old girl, and this causes some serious confrontation between her an Hope.
The issue marks two really big moments that I personally enjoyed. First Hope actively using her ability to control her "Lights" and second the Gen Hope kids finally interacting with the Academy X kids. The latter is a really long time in coming.
The whole issue is incredibly character driven, and in a book like this with really layered characters, putting them through their paces, and facing them with some serious conflict really brings who they are to the surface.
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