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Uncanny X-Men #1 – Review

Posted on February 15, 2013 by paladinking

UNCANNY X-MEN #1

By: Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Chris Bachalo (pencils & colors), Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza & Al Vey (inks), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story:  An inside man approaches Maria Hill with an offer to help take down Scott Summers.

The Review:  One of the concerns I had about this book going in was the way it would differentiate itself from All-New X-Men.  Yes, I realize it wouldn’t feature the time traveling teens, but Cyclops and his gang have appeared quite a bit in that book such that having them star in this one seemed to be some serious overlap.  Thankfully, Bendis quickly dispels this concern.  It’s not so much that Cyclops team are front and center, which they are, but rather that the tone of the book has been subtly altered.  While part of it may be due to Bachalo’s artwork, with its muddy colors and its lack of distinct, clean lines (as opposed to Immonen and Marquez on All-New), the big reason for this is the subtle change in tone.  The book feels more shadowy, more “underground,” and a touch more edgy.  The humour isn’t there and the soap opera of All-New is shifted into something that’s a little closer to twisty, spy-thriller dramatics.  All-New is the above-ground, flagship story.  Uncanny is what happens beneath and on the revolutionary fringes that Cyclops and his team currently occupy.
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Avengers Vs X-Men: Consequences #5

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Roman Colombo

By: Kieron Gillen (wrirer), Gabriel Hernandez Walta (art), Jim Charalampidis (Colors)

The Story: Sigh…there’s a Prison break.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The Review: Well, so much for “consequences.”  What were the consequences of Avengers vs X-Men exactly, as defined by this series? We got a lot of Cyclops in prison…which is now a moot point. Hope looking for Cable (he finds her, and leaves).  And…what? The only person to have any real consequences as a result of AvX is the Black Panther, and we only saw him for one panel in issue one. Hell, he didn’t even get any dialogue. Cyclops facing the consequences and changing? That would have been nice. Instead he just wants to be the new Wolverine. Logan has the school? Fine, Scott will be the one to do what is necessary. The bottom line from all of this is that Scott Summers DIDN’T LEARN A !@#$%^& THING!!! Wolverine telling him that he tries to emulate Scott when running the school? Not enough. Tony Stark revealing that he figured out how to use Wanda and Hope to restart the mutant race? Whatever. The little matter of Scott killing them man he saw as a father–NOTHING! It takes someone nearly sociopathic  to be able to go through so much and not change in the slightest. Which are basically the people he aligns himself with: Magneto, Magik, and Danger. So, on one side we have Captain America having this epiphany that he’s treated the mutant race in a hypocritical way (he’d do anything to save humans, or Americans, but ignored the struggles of mutants). And Scott, having kept his species alive long enough to become stable again, goes back to being the same person. Is he so jaded that he can’t acknowledge the miracle that happened for his people to come back from the brink? What happened to being a political prisoner?
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Avengers vs X-Men: Consequences #3 – 4

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Roman Colombo

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Andrew Hennessy (inks), Scott Eaton (pencils-3),  Mark Brooks (pencils/inks-4)

The Story: Cyclops is still in prison, the rest of the Extinction team are still at large, the Avengers won and the X-men lost. In case you didn’t get that before. The Avengers–Captain America said in Civil War half a dozen years ago, “won everything–except the argument.”

Issue #3 Review: Stuff happened. Kind of.

Issue #4 Review: Well, there are great things about this miniseries and very frustrating things. One of the most frustrating things is that Gillen is such a talented writer, but the shackles on the story are so strong, it’s sad. The Cyclops here doesn’t even match the one we saw at the end of 2 and 3, or the final issues of Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 2). Gillen’s development of Scott Summers post AvX was not only going well, but swift. It’s only been a month and we’ve seen incredible lengths of pathos in Cyclops–all at Gillen’s hands. Everyone else writing about Cyclops right now just paint him as a dick (or the the Cyclops of the 90′s animated series). Gillen was showing us a different side to the argument. He does this not just through Scott himself, but how he interacts with others. He tells a newly formed student how wonderful Wolverine’s school is, and that as soon as he finishes his sentence, he should go there. He agrees to help Tony Stark (more on him later) with some tests after Tony tells him he knew that Wanda and Hope would reignite the mutant race. Cyclops has been showing humility, fear, wisdom, and yes,  more than a little narcissism, but Gillen was writing him as a character going through a profound change. Keyword: was. Sadly, there is a very abrupt halt to this development, and the heavy handedness of editorial glares on the page. This is especially apparent after a wonderful scene where Wolverine–calmed down since their last encounter–has a heart-to-heart with Scott that could have rebuilt their friendship. After what Wolverine tells him, and the progress Scott has made, it makes absolutely no sense to do what he does.
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Uncanny X-Men #14

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Roman Colombo

By: Kieron Gillen (story), Dustin Weaver (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors)

The Story: A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Marvel. It happens when they copy something.

The Writing: (Oh, Spoilers ahead) While the story does echo a lot of Matrix: Reloaded, it isn’t a bad story. It’s actually quite interesting. Mr. Sinister has built an entire London underground, populated by thousands of (male only) clones of himself (Ms. Sinister wasn’t invited). One of these clones, a journalist set to do an interview with Sinister Prime (?) is very different from the other clones–he has free will. But not really. He’s actually designed to think he has free will so that Sinister can be challenged by…Sinister. This actually works quite well with the Mr. Sinister we’ve been following of late. He is so egotistical that not only does he want to interview himself, but he wants to test his own system by setting himself against it.
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Uncanny X-Men #13

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Roman Colombo

By: Kieron Gillen (story), Billy Tan (pencils), Cam Smith & Craig Yeung (inks), Guru eFX (colors)

The Story: While Storm, Psylocke, and Magneto mope around that they were left out of the battle on the moon, the Generation Hope kids have an awkward chat with Unit.

The Good: Billy Tan delivers pretty well here. Especially his handling of Unit, the odd robot who has a bit of an attitude problem. The thing with Unit is that he is able to process emotion, but in such a way that people don’t understand it. Tan gives us that stoic look for him, but with enough twitches and accents that you can see his emotion. When he says that he “really did like [Hope],” it’s hard not to believe his face. And when he, as Unit tends to do, manipulates the situation and everone in the room, Tan gives him a classic evil look that is perfect for the scene.
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Uncanny X-Men #9 – Review

Posted on March 24, 2012 by paladinking

by Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco (pencils), Cam Smith (inks), Guru eFx (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: The X-Men team up with the Avengers to round up escaped prisoners from the Peak.

The Review:  I remember during Matt Fraction’s run on Uncanny that whenever Greg Land’s arc ended and the Dodsons returned, I always let out a big sigh of relief.  While Land’s last outing actually wasn’t too bad, I expected to get that similar feeling of comfort and relief with the return of Carlos Pacheco and yet….that didn’t happen.

Pacheco delivers a completely mediocre, forgettable, and unremarkable performance.  There aren’t any major errors to hang onto, it’s just so utterly and completely average with no one moment that truly impresses.  Also, while there are no major problems, there are minor quibbles:  Pacheco’s illustration of Emma’s face seemed off throughout the issue, Agent Brand’s breasts were conspicuously ginormous, and Pacheco struggled a bit to capture the specificities of some of the scenes Gillen narrates in the issue’s montages.

While Pacheco’s art may be underwhelming, this is a solid enough outing by Gillen.  He introduces a new villain, Unit, who really lets Gillen play to his strengths in writing dialogue.  Unit is arrogant, smarmy, and well-spoken, yet also cold and calculated.  Gillen gives him a voice that is full of personality and character yet also chilling and, despite that arrogant quality, slightly inhuman.  Suffice it to say, with his ear for dialogue, Gillen writes great villains and Unit gives him a stage to really show that.

The opening few pages are also very strong, focusing on Colossus’ complicated relationship and emotions towards his sister Magik and her somewhat odd position.  It’s easy to write Colossus very blandly, but Gillen succeeds with having Colossus narrate these scenes with true sincerity that really pulls you to empathize with the character.  It feels meaningful and actually made me care for the predicament of a character I’m usually a bit ambivalent towards.
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Uncanny X-Men #8 – Review

Posted on March 12, 2012 by jmiddle3

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (penciler), Jay Leisten (inker), Guru eFX (colors)

The Story: Namor proves that even he has limits.

The Review: It’s hard to come up with a reason that this issue was necessary. Sure, there are some dangling plot threads left over from the Tabula Rasa arc, but the main conflict was resolved in issue #7, and had the pacing been just a bit tighter, everything else could have been wrapped up there too. Instead, this issue becomes just a long dénouement. That’s pretty out of fashion in comics today, but it’s not always a terrible idea; sometimes this can allow the consequences of the plot to play out, giving the main story a greater sense of depth. But there just hasn’t been enough meat on the bones of this arc to merit the extra attention paid in this issue.

At the end of the last issue, Apex Charles leaves the reader with the ominous warning: “Unless we do something swiftly, every living thing in Tabula Rasa will be dead.” This isn’t the most engaging hook in the world, since we haven’t exactly been endeared to anything in the Land that Time Over-Worked. The inhabitants of Tabula Rasa so far have either been monstrous and aggressive (i.e. bat-bees and giant leeches), passive and boring (the Night People), or snooty and prone to trying to destroy the world (the Apex).  Even the pretty butterfly things that had Colossus all misty-eyed are revealed in this issue to be subterranean xenomorphs in disguise. Together, they’re not exactly the poster children for conservation.

Fortunately, the immanent threat isn’t all that bothersome. It’s just that the sun, foreign to a world which evolved in darkness, might give everything cancer, so Storm has to keep up the cloud cover until the exposition can magic that problem away in one panel. While it’s nice to see Gillen make an effort to follow through on the sci-fi principles he set up, the fact that this problem gets dealt with so quickly undercuts the already weak cliff-hanger the last issue ended with.
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Uncanny X-Men #8 – Review

Posted on March 10, 2012 by paladinking

by Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Guru eFX (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: The Immortal Man may be dealt with, but Tabula Rasa isn’t safe yet.

The Review:  If there’s one thing Uncanny X-Men has been hammering home since the relaunch, it’s that Kieron Gillen truly is a master of dialogue.  It’s always quick witted, intelligent, sincere, and, when it wants to be, legitimately and very naturally funny.  Gillen has the rare but valuable ability to make you laugh through dialogue whenever he wishes; much as in Journey into Mystery, his jokes seem to always work.

Case in point is the extended scene with Hope and Namor, a demonstration of Gillen’s skills when it comes to character-work.  The sequence is humorous throughout, highlighting Namor’s arrogant eccentricity and the fact that yeah, despite his humanoid appearance, he isn’t human.  Better still, it creates a bond between Hope and Namor, which given how utterly opposite the two are, is a really fun and rewarding dynamic.

Gillen also continues to explore the concept of the Apex, which remains interesting.  The unintentionally arrogant dialogue by the Apex remains enjoyable and I greatly enjoyed Gillen’s playing with gender as he adds further definition to the Apex’s “unwife” social relationship.  All told, the concept of the Apex has been a solid one that’s played a big role in carrying this arc.

Great dialogue, character-work, and sci-fi high concepts aside, however, this issue falls prey to something that’s become a recurring problem in Gillen’s otherwise strong run thus far:  the story itself isn’t that compelling.  Really, there isn’t really a whole lot of narrative meat on the bones here.  It simply amounts to Tabula Rasa still being in trouble due to the Sun.  But Gillen then spends the entirety of the issue doing character work with Namor/Hope and Colossus/Magik, while giving us more cool new info on the Apex.  Then, seemingly realizing that he’d forgotten to resolve the plot, he wraps it all up in a one page, heavily narrated montage where everything is neatly wrapped up.  It’s completely random and brings the issue to a screeching halt and is, quite frankly, poor storytelling.  It literally feels as though Gillen realized he’d written an issue having entirely forgotten the central plot, and then rushed to throw it all together on a single page.  It’s pretty head-spinning.
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Uncanny X-Men #7 – Review

Posted on February 22, 2012 by jmiddle3

By: Keiron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (penciler), Jay Leisten (inker) Guru eFX (colors)

The Story: Two exceptional individuals battle over whether to live in harmony with inferior beings or to dominate and destroy them. Wait, why does this sounds familiar…

The Review: I’ve been struggling with this issue for a while now.  The heart of my problem is that the Tabula Rasa arc of Uncanny X-Men is boring me to tears, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. The premise, which explores a leftover story element from another X-Book, is clever, and exemplifies the best kind of continuity-building; the art, while not exactly Eisner-worthy, is adequate, and in some instances mildly impressive; and for goodness’ sakes, it’s Kieron Gillen writing the story. I almost never have anything bad to say about his work!

And yet, even as I write this, I am fighting back a yawn. While the dialogue is still crisp and clever, managing to fit in tons of exposition without ever reading like a lecture, I’m struggling to care about the characters who speak it.  This is largely to do with the placement of the central dilemma. This arc hasn’t done very much in the way of exploring the main cast. The two subplots with personal stakes for the X-Men—Warren Worthington’s role in the creation of Tabula Rasa, and Colossus’s ongoing descent into becoming the Juggernaut—are both completely ignored in this issue. Instead we’re stuck with only the conflict between the two surviving Apexes to drive this issue.

The two Apexes—they say we can call them Good Apex and Bad Apex, but you might as well call them “Apex Charles” and “Apex Eric”—are interesting, but they are hard to care about. I love the idea of communicating through a musical language, and the ambiguous nature of their relationship is a nice touch. Their disdain for the low intelligence of the X-Men is entertaining, but it also makes them both pretty unlikable. I don’t feel empathy for either’s situation, tragic though it may be. The X-Men seem only to be present to bare witness to the tragedy, and to use their powers in awesome and creative ways when the plot requires it.
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Generation Hope #16 – Review

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Roman Colombo

Written by James Asmus, Art by Takeshi Miyazawa, Colors by Jim Charalampidis

The Story: Zero has no hope in the mutant messiah, and wants to take Hope away from everyone! Wordplay!

The Writing: I was never a fan as James Asmus. His one shots never thrilled me and his work in the anthologies was never very inspiring. When they announced that he was going to take over Generation Hope, a series I enjoy, I hung my head and considered canceling the title. But I decided to give it a shot and see where he took the title. And damn–Asmus stepped up to the plate. And then damn–Generation Hope gets canceled. And the thing is, it’s getting really good. The Sebastian Shaw arc was handled much better than I thought it would be. He also carried over Gillen’s work with ease and now that we’re in the penultimate issue, we get the culmination of everything from–well, really from when Second Coming finished to now. Asmus doesn’t try to fix what isn’t broken. He develops the characters further, yes, but doesn’t make any drastic changes to the characters or their voices.  Hopefully they find a good place for him. I would love to see him return to the younger X-Men characters again.
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Journey Into Mystery #634

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Roman Colombo

Written by Kieron Gillen, Art by Richard Elson, Colored by Jessica Kholinne

The Story: So where did all that fear stuff go when the serpent died? Why, into Loki’s head of course!

The Writing: Kieron Gillen might just be Marvel’s best writer. Might be a bold statement, but anyone reading Journey Into Mystery and not feeling that way needs to question why they read comics in the first place. While I don’t agree with every choice he’s made in Uncanny X-Men, he’s still one of the best. Journey is simply the best place to see his talent unfold. This particular issue is brimming with awesomeness. From the conflict between Loki and Son of Satan to the journey through Loki’s nightmare–and even Thori gets a wonderful scene. What sets Journey apart from every other comic is that it doesn’t feel like any other comic out there. I think the closed is Unwritten, With this issue, he uses the comic’s own unique voice to set it apart from even its own series. Gillen gets really creative in this issue, but it never comes off as gimmicky. In fact, when Loki is telling the captions to shut up, instead of coming off silly, you really feel like this is completely natural in Loki’s nightmare and must stop.  The series so far is–well, it’s like Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment is divided into 6 parts. The crime takes place in part 1. The next 5 parts are all punishment. Well, so far we’re 4 or 5 issues after his actions in Fear Itself have concluded, and he’s still having to deal with all the choices he made–and this punishment doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. There’s the coming crossover Exiled with New Mutants in May, and there’s that little matter of Sutur being freed. It’s like watching a “kid playing hero” learning that there is more work to do after saving the day. Hopefully this series has a long, healthy life, Loki and Gillen deserve it.
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Uncanny X-Men #4 – Review

Posted on January 9, 2012 by paladinking

by Kieron Gillen (writing), Brandon Peterson (art), Justin Ponsor (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: The Phalanx returns and the X-Men race to stop its rapid consumption.

The Review:  What a strange issue… I really don’t mean that in a bad way at all.  In fact, I wish more ongoing series did this.  Uncanny X-Men #4 is something a one-shot, and Gillen really makes the most of the opportunity, using the done-in-one format to tell a rather different kind of story with a very different focus.  It’s told from the perspective of a member of the Phalanx, marooned on Earth, and the result is a surprisingly intimate comic.

Gillen’s goal with this comic is to make the unrelatable relatable and to make something utterly alien, and generally construed as evil, into something sympathetic.  That’s no easy feat, yet Gillen does accomplish it.  The Phalanx becomes comprehensible.  It’s logic is still completely at odds with humanity, but that there is a logic operating is clear.  More than that though, while Gillen never shies away from just how different, and thus how opposed, the Phalanx is to humanity, he does a great job of giving it legitimate emotions, feelings of loneliness and affection that are surprising.

Really, Gillen boils the Phalanx down into something that is simply incompatible with humanity.  It feels and it loves, but simply put, what it sees as good and affectionate, humanity sees as murderously destructive. The result is something of a bizarre story that ends up being somewhat chilling.  At the heart of Gillen’s script is an entity that simply doesn’t want to be alone, while also wanting to express its affection, but its means are repugnant.  What you end up with then, is an isolated freak, killing out of love and loneliness, wracked by his conscious, but flailing about lost.  It’s thoroughly unsettling, but Gillen crafts a comic where you actually understand the incomprehensible and feel legitimate sympathy for a creature that commits mass murder while garnering that sympathy.  It’s a morally challenging comic, to be sure.

Of course, the downside to all of this is that in delving into these complexities, Gillen does end up being guilty of overwriting the book a bit.  There is a LOT of narration, so much so that it does slow the book down at some points.  At times, that’s acceptable – it gives the book an ominous tone – but that pace is constant, irrespective of when that ominous tone should be at the forefront or not.  I think Gillen’s biggest crime with all this narration is that he does fall prey on a few occasions of telling rather than showing.  I realize a great deal of characterization was necessary in an issue like this to establish the required intimacy, but Gillen should’ve allowed the art to do a little more of the talking.  I don’t think the reader needed quite so much hand-holding.
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Uncanny X-Men #2 – Review

Posted on December 1, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco, Jorge Molina & Rodney Buchemi (pencils), Cam Smith, Roger Bonet, Walden Wong & Molina (inks), Frank D’Armata, Rachelle Rosenberg, Jim Charalampidis & Molina (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White & Sebastian Girner (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Mr. Sinister has created an army of clones of himself.

Five Things: 

1. Enjoyable Mr. Sinister story. - I’m not usually a fan of recycled villains in superhero comics because they become as predictable as the heroes, but this is a pretty nifty Mr. Sinister story.  The idea that he’s been chasing perfection for over a century and now finally thinks he has things in place to act is pretty cool.  It reminds me of something someone said about cottage cheese once: the first time someone made cottage cheese someone opened up the vat and said, “It’s ready.  Let’s eat it.”  How did they know that the goopy white stuff was ready to eat?  That’s kinda what Sinister has done here: He thinks he’s perfect and he’s ready to clone himself and control the planet.

2. A little talky. - Man….there is a lot of Mr. Sinister talking to hear his own voice in this issue.  Gillen manages to power through it in this issue just by being a gifted wordsmith, but there will be fans that groan any time they see such big word balloons.  The trouble with lots of words is that it sometimes slows the tempo of the comic down more than it should by making us linger too much on panels that should be fleeting.

3. Art manages to be okay in spite of a huge cast. - There’s no art in this issue that is “bad”, but anytime you have 3 pencillers, 4 inkers and 4 colorists the issue will look like a bit of a mess.  On a positive note, the storytelling remains intact and all the pages are professional.  I don’t want to bang on the art too much, but it just kinda bums me out that we’re already running into this problem on issue #2 AND that comes on the heels of a pretty average first issue.  Damn it, Uncanny is supposed to be a flagship book!  The art shouldn’t have to be workman-like and professional.  It should be awesome and with the exception of Terry Dodson, this title hasn’t had “awesome” in a long time.
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Uncanny X-Men #1 – Review

Posted on November 2, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco (pencils), Cam Smith (inks), Frank D’Armata (colors), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: We’ve seen Team Wolverine’s light-hearted high school.  Surely Team Cyclops will be up to more adult things.

Five Things: 

1. Really like the more adult tone of this title.  It’s too soon to really tell, but it seems like Uncanny X-Men will be a lot more serious than Wolverine and the X-Men.  That’s great because the world isn’t served well by having 4-5 roughly similar X-Men titles as we’ve endured the last few years.  So, while Wolverine is putting up with the hi-jinks of Iceman, Rockslide, Gambit, Rogue, Kitty, etc., Cyclops is going to deal with real mutant issues by setting up an uber-team of mutants who can tackle any problem and scare the pants off anyone who’d think twice about crossing the mutants.

2. Speaking of super-teams.  He calls them the “Extinction Team” and it consists of Cyclops, Magneto, Storm, Namor, Hope, Juggernaut-Colossus, Danger and Illyana.  Oy vey!  That really is a pretty horrifying concentration of power.  Just dealing with Magneto, Namor and Super-Colossus is pretty scary.  Oh, and Danger now has some kinds of super battle modifications which is pretty interesting given how formidable she was already.  And, then you’ve got Storm whipping up a hurricane and Cyclops shooting energy bolts and Hope copying whatever mutant’s powers would be most convenient.  Holy Hell!  I also really liked how Cyclops compared this team to a weapon of mass destruction and pointed out that Iraq (who didn’t have WMDs) got invaded whereas North Korea (which does have nukes) just got economic sanctions.   Then later when the Dreaming Celestial goes nuts, he says not to bother calling the Avengers because if his Extinction Team can’t manage the problem, what are Cap and Hawkeye going to do?  Totally badass and he’s right!

3.  Also deals with other mutants on Utopia.  This was great too.  While we thankfully didn’t dwell on these other mutants, it was nice to see that everyone has a role on Cyclops’ team.  There’s the science team, the security team, the street team, the clean-up crew and Hope’s crew.  Each has distinct jobs and the young mutants like Loa and Surge get folded in wherever they make sense as part of their training.
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X-Men: First to Last HC – Review

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Roman Colombo

Written by Chris Yost; Now: Penciled by Paco Media, inked by Juan Vlasco, and colored by Mrate Gracia; Then: Art by Dalabor Talajic, colored by Juan Vlasco.

The Story: One of the apes who got the crap beaten out of him with a femur bone in 2001: A Space Odyssey has his own bone to pick with Cyclops.

The Good: Chris Yost knows his X-Men. He’s stated before that his goal is to eventually write Uncanny X-Men, and after reading his work on X-Force and New X-Men, it’s kind of weird that he hasn’t been approached for the job. First to Last is an Uncanny story rudely marginalized as a filler arc for Gischler’s X-Men run. But it’s that high stakes story that was missing from much of Fraction’s run of Uncanny from the time this came out (Quarantine…why was that story so long?). But Yost’s story, all taking place in one day, has so much weight and so much potential impact, that not being told in the flagship book is simply disrespectful.

And just as the title suggests, this story has both classic X-Men goodness (protecting a world that hates and fears them!) and some new juiciness (mutantkind was being watched over for all these years?) Yost’s story, that staggers between the current era of the X-Men (or, the era right before Schism) and the “First Class” era of Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, Angel, and Iceman, gives the reader the unique opportunity to see just how much team has changed since its offset. Beast is no longer a member; Angel is a homicidal hero; Jean is dead; Iceman is jaded; and Cyclops…Cyclops went from boy scout to general. But we also get to see changes in other characters too. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver we see starting to question their father’s choices in the “Then” segments. Toad we get to see as a lackey being pushed around by both his peers and his enemies in the past, and then taking drastic measures to not be pushed around in the present. Xavier…isn’t even in the “Now” segments, which is a point in and of itself. His dream doesn’t really matter anymore. But the biggest change is by far seen in Magneto. In the “Then” segments, he is totally willing to wipe out humankind when the Evolutionaries make the offer, but in the “Now,” (SPOILER ALERT) when they return to him with the same offer, he refuses, stating “I laughed at Charles Xavier and his dream. But my dream cost me my children…it cost me everything!” He might not be saying that he’s abandoned his beliefs, but he now sees them as a downfall and not a virtue.
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Wolverine and the X-Men #1 – Review

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Roman Colombo

by: Jason Aaron (writer), Chris Bachalo (pencils and colors), Tim Townsend, Jamie Mendoza, and Al Vey (inks)

The Story: Wolverine had the money to build a school with floating towers? So that’s why he is on every superhero team in the Marvel Universe!

Good stuff:

1. Jason Aaron… fun? Everything I have read from Jason Aaron has been dark and serious. I mean come on–his Wolverine #1 started with his character going to Hell. The Hell. I fully expected Wolverine and the X-Men to start with something along the lines of “Every kitten on Earth is killed by Mr. Sinister, who by the way just violated Pixie.” But no…Wolverine and the X-Men makes the reader smile. Not just smile, but feel this warm spark of wonder. From Jason Aaron. It honestly doesn’t feel like his work–instead, it’s like Chris Claremont and Mike Carey co-wrote this. But the fact that the tone is so different than anything Aaron’s shown before is a testament to his talent. He just proved something to everyone: he doesn’t have to write dark to write well.

2. Characterization done right. One of the things I despised about the “last” issue of Uncanny was the completely uncharacteristic immaturity of Beast. Oddly, this was right after Gillen wrote him wonderfully in “Regenesis.” Jason Aaron’s Beast is one I can’t wait to read more of–it’s exactly who Hank McCoy is, and how he would be on the first day of the most technologically advanced school ever made.  But then there’s Professor X’s passing of the torch, a great way to begin the series, Headmistress Kitty Pryde trying to keep things from spiraling out of control. And Toad, the janitor… He’s actually kind of a treat in this. One character that Aaron seems to love to write is Idie, and her brief scene is wonderful. It’s sad and cute all at the same time. Just one thing confused me…I’m behind on some books, but what’s up with the army of tiny Nightcrawlers?

3. Schism is Over! Thank god. And the characters don’t sit around dwelling on how much they hate Cyclops (remember when we all used to hate Cyclops? Oh the 90s). It’s hardly even mentioned…well, not in this way, at least. In fact, Wolverine says a joke about it at one point.

4. Chris Bachalo. Seriously, that’s all that needs to be said. He is perfect for this book.

5. Everything else. After the story is some great extras, including a list of who went to Westchester (faculty and students alike) and a nice course offering (Gambit teaches Sex Ed, for all those who were wondering).
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Uncanny X-Men #544 – Review

Posted on October 22, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The end is here!  Uncanny X-Men ends its long run of continuous, mostly monthly publication since Giant Size X-Men #1.  Of course, this is just before there is a new #1 next month, but I digress.  Things end with the team splitting up and a familiar old villain rearing his head.

Five Things:

1.  It’s kinda sad to see this end.  I’ve just ignored all the hoopla over other long running titles getting renumbered recently, but this series was the one I really loved since I was a kid.  So, it is sad to know we’ll have a new #1 issue next month.  There’s a lot of history and tradition in the preceding 543 issues and most of it was pretty good.  But, I guess the real reason it makes me sad is that renumbering is the publisher’s way of telling you “it isn’t working and we don’t know what else to do to increase readership other than renumbering.”  Hopefully it’ll work out for Marvel.

2.  Mr. Sinister is going to feature prominently as a villain.  This really isn’t a good thing.  There is a generation of fans who grew up with Sinister, but he’s a tedious villain.  Creating a new villain for each arc would be much preferable.  Old villains are boring because we kinda know what to expect AND we know that they’re as safe from permanent death as the heroes.

3.  Gillen writes really well.  Gillen does write really well and that goes a long way to making a comic enjoyable to read.  There are some writers out there who have decent ideas, but just don’t string words together all that well.  Or they can only write in “witty banter mode”.  Gillen can actually crank up a word balloon that is longer than a sentence fragment and not have today’s impatient comic reader getting itchy.  This is a really useful skill because sometimes you can’t tell the whole story with 5 word sentences OR there might be an artist on the book with significant limitations.
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Uncanny X-Men #543 – Review

Posted on September 22, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Fear Itself-bedazzled Juggernaut battles the new champion of Cyttorak.

What’s Good: It was kinda fun to watch Colossus beat down Juggernaut.  There’s gotta be a lot of penned-up frustration in the big Russian from all the beatings he’s endured from Juggernaut’s fists.  Even Greg Land did a pretty nice job of capturing these two behemoths smashing the crap outta each other.  That’s really the one cool thing that happened in this issue and it was cool enough to make up for a lot of the other stuff that was annoying.
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Uncanny X-Men #542 – Review

Posted on August 18, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: How will the X-Men stop the Juggernaut?  Well, Cyclops has some plans.

What’s Good: The coolest thing in this issue was seeing all the wacky schemes that Cyclops tries in his effort to stop the Fear Itself Juggernaut.  None of them are anything as passé as “have Storm zap him with a lightning bolt”.  Nope, right in the opening scene, you see Cyclops standing next to Avalanche (who is a villain) as they open a chasm to try to stop Juggernaut.  When that doesn’t work, so they start rolling out all kinds of weird and unusual combos (e.g. Gambit energizing Rockslide who then attacks Juggernaut).  Of course, nothing works, but the cool thing is how much confidence this gives me in Gillen handling Uncanny for the immediate future.  Any of these combos could have been the big fight-ender at the climax of a generic X-story during a recently ended run on the title, but here they’re single-panel throw-away concepts.  That isn’t to say that they’re trivial things, but the way Gillen is just flinging them around makes me feel that he’s got a LOT of ideas to blow 5-6 of them in a single issue.  Let’s just say that I don’t think these were his best ideas and that means the future should be good.

The build-up for next issue involves Colossus and is really cool.  I could have done without the Kitty-Colossus angst (“Oh dear, they’re being pulled apart again.  Can’t they catch a break!?!”), but it really makes sense that Colossus would be the one who has to go up against Juggernaut considering all the times they’ve fought and all the times Juggernaut has kicked Colossus’ butt.  Maybe now he has the edge?
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Uncanny X-Men #541 – Review

Posted on July 20, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The Juggernaut, complete with Fear Itself hammer accessory, is bearing down on San Francisco.  It’s up to the X-Men to stop him.

What’s Good: This was a pretty tight issue that was entertaining to read.  The story is pretty basic: Juggernaut is stomping towards SF and the X-Men need to stop him.  Of course, Juggernaut is difficult to stop on a normal day– now that he’s powered-up with his Fear Itself hammer, we really don’t know what his limits are, but we’ve seen both the Thunderbolts and a bunch of the Avengers Initiative kids take cracks at him in other Fear Itself tie-ins and no one has even slowed him down yet.  So, the X-Men are faced with a pretty tall task.

Gillen does a nice job of getting a lot of X-Men into the action and it isn’t just the standard mutants.  True, Emma and Cyclops feature prominently, but Wolverine is nowhere to be seen (Bravo!) whereas Iceman and Colossus get big roles.  Of course, any long-time X-Men fan gets gleeful at the prospect of Colossus v. Juggernaut tussle (think of Uncanny #183!) and it’s nice to see Colossus get in some good licks!  We even get a cool moment from Hope and it’s nice seeing Hope turn into a useful hero rather than the child in danger that she has been for the last ~4 years of comics.  Of course, this whole thing is orchestrated by General Cyclops…
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Uncanny X-Men #540 – Review

Posted on July 6, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Juggernaut (the hammer-wielding, leveled-up version) is coming to town.

What’s Good: There are a few little nuggets about the world of Fear Itself in this issue, and I guess that’s really the point when the big event crosses over into an ongoing series.  Of all the folks who have gotten hammers, it makes the most sense that the X-Men would have something to do with Juggernaut since he is really the only one with whom they have a lot of history.  So, it was kinda cool to see Juggernaut get a thrall to follow him around, crying to everyone that DOOM is upon them.  Still no explanation about why Juggernaut speaks in viking runes whereas most of the other hammer-wielders can speak English…

Even if Cyclops was being all kinds of evasive, it was also nice to see the little scene between him and the sexy Mayor of San Francisco (Would she really be that sexy?).  One of the plot threads I’ve always enjoyed about the X-Men’s relocation to SF has been their integration with the Mayor’s office.  It was just kind of a neat touch.  Steve Rogers and the Avengers get to talk directly to the President.  The X-Men are happy just to deal with a lowly Mayor after being complete outcasts in the NYC metro area for decades.  I have a feeling some of this will be going away in the near future with Schism, so we’ll enjoy it while it is here.

Oh, and it was kinda fun to see Namor get shot down.  The only reason I enjoy having Namor around as a character are for those scenes where a woman refuses to sleep with him or some bad-guy who he takes lightly kicks his ass.  Love watching that guy fail.
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Uncanny X-Men #539 – Review

Posted on July 1, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Ibraim Roberson (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: A one-and-done story featuring Hope and Logan.

What’s Good: Let’s hear it for the done-in-one story!  In this era of 2-issue ideas that are milked into 6-issue story arcs (so that Marvel can sell a measly 1000 paperbacks), it is really refreshing to get a tight one-issue story.  Especially when you consider that it is easy to close your eyes and see how even this story could have been stretched across 6 months.  Hell, we’ve all seen X-events that had less meat on the bones than this one story.  Bravo to Gillen and the X-office for getting this one right.

I’m usually not a huge fan of having Wolverine be a central character in an X-comic just because I feel that he is overexposed and I get sick of seeing him hogging the spotlight (i.e. can’t someone else be the hero sometimes?).  But this story has an intelligent set-up and it makes sense that Wolverine is the one to save the day.  It’s a slight SPOILER, but the basic story is that some of Hope’s “Lights” (from the Generation Hope series) take Hope for a day on the town to get her to loosen up, but Hope is kidnapped.  And Wolverine is on the case to get her back.  See, doesn’t that make sense?  That’s what would happen. Wolverine would just go and get her back (although you might expect that Cyclops would be sending a back-up team 15 minutes behind him).

Continuing with the SPOILERIFIC discussion, the talk that Hope and Logan have after he saves the day is really good: He isn’t being standoffish toward her because he is angry about Nightcrawler’s death in Second Coming, it’s because he’s concerned that she might be a danger (i.e. something to do with Phoenix Force) and that if she is dangerous Logan knows that he’s going to be the one called on to kill her.

Neat idea, huh?  Ordinarily, Logan is all over acclimating the young female mutants, so it is a little odd that he has been so standoffish toward Hope, especially given that she embodies so much of his warrior attitude and was trained by Cable who Logan respects.  Now it makes sense. It’s the same reason that farmer’s don’t give all their chickens and cows names: because they’re gonna have to kill them someday.
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Uncanny X-Men #538 – Review

Posted on June 17, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Terry Dodson (pencils), Rachel Dodson (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The conclusion of the deposed Powerlord Kruun’s attempt to get revenge against the X-Men.

What’s Good: This was a fun and quickly paced issue.  As I’ll get into below, I think it had some flaws in execution, but the flow of the issue was pretty strong.

The high point is that we have Kitty back.  Yea!  She’s such an important part of the X-Men and family of comic X-titles really suffered for her absence (first while she was in the space bullet and then when she came back but was stuck being insubstantial).  It’s also nice to see that she and Peter maybe have a chance to be together now.  If you’re remember, one of the cruel twists of the Whedon Astonishing X-Men run was that just as Peter returned from the dead and they began their relationship, Kitty got stuck in the space bullet and was gone.  Of course, I’m sure they’ll be stuck on opposite sides of the upcoming Schism storyline just to show how serious the Schism situation is. [NOTE to X-writers: That would be a pretty lazy story choice unless there is a really good reason for it.]

It is also pretty cool that San Francisco is continuing to get played up as the most welcoming city in the U.S.A.  I thought it made a LOT of sense when the mutants relocated to SF around issue #495 or so and it has been fun to see the mutants close relationship with the mayor.  So, pretty cool that SF is going to give a home to the Breakworld aliens.
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Quick-Hit Reviews – Week of May 25, 2011

Posted on May 31, 2011 by dfstell

A whole LOT of very solid comics last week.  We can’t review everything in-depth, so the least we can do is give you a quick-hit letting you know what we thought of an issue and whether it is worth picking up.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #6 - Talk about not being what I expected!  I was honestly starting to lose the narrative in issues #4 and #5 of this series once Spider/Wolvie ran into that Luke Cage-looking guy with the diamond-encrusted baseball bat.  So, I really wasn’t looking forward to this issue at all, but it really came together nicely.  Silly me, how could I doubt Jason Aaron?  The guy still hasn’t told me a bad story.  This issue dispenses with the diamond-encrusted baseball bats and Mojo and finds Peter and Logan stranded in the Wild West where Peter finds love and Logan comes to realize how much he likes Peter.  I’ll need to reread this entire series, but I think it might just be one of those modern classics that you could just hand to people as a good Spider-Man/Wolverine story.  Really nice art by Adam Kubert.  Grade: A-

Uncanny X-Men #537 - Kieron Gillen has got a nice little story going on in Uncanny and it is making me very optimistic about how his run on Uncanny might turn out.  The story in this issue follows the deposed Powerlord Kruun from Breakworld as he attempts to exact revenge upon the X-Men who caused him to lose power during Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run.  What makes this story work so nicely is that Gillen is only playing with a few of the X-Men at one time.  Less is always more when doing an X-Men story!  Most of the action in this issue is Kitty-centric as she has to find a way to get help when no one can hear her.  Her solution is pretty darn clever.  I wish the Dodson’s could do all the art on Uncanny and it should be a law that every issue that the Dodson’s do illustrate feature Kitty and Emma Frost because they draw the hell out of those two characters.  Grade: B

The Tattered Man - This one-shot from Image by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray is a very straightforward.  It’s Halloween and some druggie kids take advantage of the holiday to get an old man to open his door, they bust in wanting drug money and get a little more than they bargained for.  There are some parts of this story that are a little familiar, but the execution is really tight and the creators bring it home by not being afraid to kill a few characters who you would usually think are “safe”.  The highlight of the issue was probably the old man recounting his background as a Holocaust survivor (just going to show that you can tread familiar ground if you do it well).  Nice art, especially on the design of the supernatural force of vengeance that shows up.  Palmiotti & Gray could have a nice creator-owned winner with this and this could easily become an ongoing series.  Grade: B

The Incredible Hulks #629 - This was a very good conclusion to a pretty good story arc that teamed up Bruce Banner/Hulk his ex-wife Betty/Red She Hulk.  The story has lots of good Hulk moments.  What Pak does really well is sell the “Oh no!  Now you’ve made him mad!” moment.  You know, the scene where the bad guy whacks the hell out of the Hulk, Hulk goes flying 15 miles through the air and smashes into the ground, but when Hulk climbs out of the crater you just know that the other dude is in HUGE trouble.  It’s hard to capture that moment, but Pak does it really well.  We also get some really good Banner/Betty stuff in this issue.  Betty wants to be with Bruce, but as Red She Hulk, she has other plans.  The only downer in this issue is that I don’t see how the ending jibes at all with what happened in Fear Itself #2 where Banner and Betty are working out their issues in a rain forest.  Is there a writer who cares less about that sort of contemporaneous action than Matt Fraction?  Great art by Tom Grummett too.  Grade: B

Spider-Girl #7 - There are some good elements in this issue, but the negatives kinda balance things out.  The good is seeing Spider-Girl teaming up with Spider-Man to take down some bad guys.  We’re so used to Spider-Man being “the kid” who is always the one being childish and inappropriate and annoying the piss out of the other heroes, that it is kinda fun to see the role reversal and Tobin handles that really well.  There is also a very creative moment when Spider-Girl overwrites the code of a murderous robot’s AI with the game Angry Birds to keep the robot from attacking (unless someone acts like a pig, of course).  But, the downsides are here too.  For one, I don’t want Spider-Man in this book.  Nothing screams, “This character cannot carry his/her own title!” like having Wolverine or Spider-Man co-star.  The other problem I’m having is that this issue is full of Spider-Girl punching out room’s full of commando guys.  Spider-Girl has no powers and is a ~80 pound teenage girl.  I don’t care if she was “trained by Captain America”, she just can’t hit hard enough to have her main attack being punching and kicking 230-pound guys.  Watch some MMA and get creative with how these undersized characters can take down a bigger dude!  And we have a classic Marvel cover fail that shows Spider-Girl punching Screwball (who isn’t even mentioned in the issue).  Grade: C  
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Uncanny X-Men #536 – Review

Posted on May 1, 2011 by dfstell

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Terry Dodson (pencils), Rachel Dodson (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Would you let the aliens from Breakworld sleep on the couch?

What’s Good: If you liked Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run from a few years ago, you should really enjoy this issue because Gillen is playing with most of Whedon’s stories from those issues.  Isn’t it funny that a series that was only marginally “in continuity” back when it was published has ended up being so influential today?  Just goes to show that there is a difference between “continuity” and “things happening simultaneously” and those things like really late issues don’t matter so much years down the road.  Time surely grants perspective.

Anyway, Gillen clearly has a good handle on all the characters at play here: Agent Brand is prickly, Emma is haughty, Cyclops feels responsible, Colossus is dutiful and loyal, Magneto is driven, etc.  As fans, we could rattle off the personality attributes of the core X-Men, but I think it is a lot harder to write dialog and pencil and ink the pages such that those characters we know and love come shining through.

The action in this issue is all good and I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise that the Breakworld aliens are not quite as benign as they make out and I’ll be very curious to see how [SPOILERS] them attacking Magneto with “the cure” will work out.  My recollection is that he isn’t really a mutant any more and that the High Evolutionary did something to him that approximated his mutant powers.  We’ll see, but Magneto clearly has a role to play in this story (along with the “space tin”) and it’ll be fun to see what happens.

The Dodson’s again do a great job with the art.  I really love artists who have a distinct style where you can open the comic and say, “This is drawn by Terry and Rachel Dodson.”  One thing that I find really impressive about their work is how much acting and emoting their characters do given their grounding in realism.  And, their faithfulness to human anatomy (beyond the huge boobs) is pretty uncanny.  I never get distracted by the length of a finger or a muscle that seems to be in the wrong place.  Very nice…
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