Weekly Comic Book Review

By Matt Fraction (writer), Yanick Paquette (pencil), Karl Story (inks), and Justin Posner (colors)

The Story: The Beast takes his science team back in time to the early 1900′s to try and find out how to find a way to erase the effects of M-day on the dwindling mutant population. The hope is that by finding the parents of the first mutant, who by the way is the science team’s vary own Nemesis, they will be able to find the cure for the three deadly words: “no more mutants.”

What’s Good: For a change the story and art. Seriously, not to be coy, but both those things have really been putrid and pull-list erasing as of late on Uncanny X-men. It was great to see Matt Fraction tell a story without trying to sound ultra-cool and slick. The dynamics of the tale itself moved the story, not a certain message or tone. When Fraction took away the soapbox, the characters were free to develop and seemed very natural as opposed to the forced, MTV, and generation Y campiness that he’s shoved down the readers’ throats as of late.

Yanick Paquette took over pencils from the Greg Land/Terry Dodson rotating work, and honestly, the book was infinitely better for it. Not to get into Land’s work and approach to character designs (WCBR has been down that road many times recently), but simply, Land’s and Dodson’s work is so different from one another  that the series itself seems like a jaded, out of synch visual offering. However, Paquette seems to come in the middle of these two, with a perkier Bryan Hitch type of style.

The story itself has a lot of interesting and quirky dimensions to it and as with most good stories, leaves many issues open to explore at a later date. It plays with some stereotypical time travel cliche’s effectively.  Aside from still not knowing what caused the first mutant (of the modern day mutie population), there are also new questions surrounding the Hell Fire club and its founders that are pretty cool. I’ve never cared for Sebastian Shaw and his lot, but now seeing that they have some role to play in modern mutant origins, I am definitely more interested in them.

What’s Not So Good: I guess the overall premise of this voyage to the past is a little shaky. The fact that Beast’s crew needs to go back to the early 1900′s to get blood samples seems a little silly. Couldn’t they just do some tests, like DNA or something, on the corpses buried in the present? Also, the large cast of the Science Team were mostly superfluous, playing no role at all except drinking tea and sitting around while a few members did all the work.

I know the X-men Universe will get a boost with the Dark X-Men arc hitting this month, but I was disappointed to see that there is still no progress in the whole M-Day situation. This is really interesting stuff and the longer it lingers unresolved or overlooked, then the cheaper the series feels. The fact that the science team comes back empty handed basically dead-ended all the momentum built up to the issue.

Conclusion: A good one-shot featuring the most interesting sub-plot in the X-Men world right now. Too bad nothing substantial came from it.

Grade: B

-Rob G.