B y: James Asmus (writer), Nick Bradshaw (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Jared Fletcher (letters), Jake Thomas & Jordan D. White (assistant editors), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: A team of X-Men consisting of Cyclops, Hope, Namor & Dr. Nemesis gets sent to the Negative Zone.
What’s Good: This was awesome ! The X-Men are kinda my cross to bear as a comic fan. It’s the one sub-universe where I’m pretty much going to get all the titles whether they are good or bad. Recently the whole X-verse has been a little mediocre. There have been bright spots, but a lot of mediocre issues. So, I was kinda gritting my teeth at the concept of the Uncanny X-Men Annual crossing over with the Steve Rodgers Super Soldier Annual and the Namor Annual. I thought to myself, “great, now I have to buy three $3.99 annuals when I wasn’t sure I even wanted one!” Especially because annuals usually suck nowadays because they’re used to do things like launch unnecessary spin-off titles.
But, I shouldn’t have been so cynical because this issue kicked all kinds of ass. Part of the magic comes from the small team dynamic. Can you imagine a stranger X-line-up than Cyclops, Hope, Namor and Dr. Nemesis? Especially since none of these characters thinks much of Cyclops. So, much of the issue consists of Cyclops trying to lead with the others rolling their eyes at him. And this works because they are whisked away to the Negative Zone. If this same behavior took place on Utopia in front of the whole team, Cyclops would have to have a stick up his butt, bark orders and demand that those orders be followed. Here, since Cyclops is away from everyone else, he has the freedom to laugh at himself a little bit which is a side of the character that is fun to see. Again, this behavior wouldn’t work on Utopia because it would ruin his role as “leader”, but it does kinda work when the team is stuck in the Negative Zone.
This issue is just crammed full of humor too. Whether it is Emma declaring that she doesn’t know how to have a family fight without “scotch and swearing” or Scott imploring Hope to please cooperate with him because Namor and Nemesis are like herding cats, “Surly, bitter cats who pee on everything.” or Nemesis deciding that being teamed up with Namor (as opposed to teamed up with Cyclops or Hope) is the “least terrible option”, I laughed my way through this entire issue. Imagine that? An X-Men comic with HUMOR!
And goodness is the art devine! If there is nice thing about annuals, it is because it gives the editors a chance to showcase some art that just can’t appear in a monthly comic. Now usually editors fumble the ball and just give us some art that we already have seen, but this issue is really something special. The entire issue is so detailed that it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that it took Nick Bradshaw 3 months to pencil and ink this. You simply won’t see art like this on a monthly book because it is just too good and I doubt any artist could keep up this level of detail on a monthly basis. I even love Bradshaw’s characters which are cartoony and lively.
I’ll sum up my enjoyment for the art this way; I stopped twice in the middle of writing this review to see if I could find where Bradshaw sells his original art.
What’s Not So Good: My only complaint is more of an editorial issue. Even though this is a very good annual, it is a little annoying that to finish the story, we will have to also buy two other annuals. If it is going to be like that, why not just have it be a miniseries? Why can’t annuals just be stand-alone stories anymore?
And, even though I’ve gushed about the art above, the first few pages are noticeably rougher than the rest of the issue (at least in terms of character’s faces). Wonder why that was?
Conclusion: A fun, lively and jaunty story that had me laughing out loud in a few places coupled with some seriously badass art. Why can’t we have Asmus and Bradshaw do monthly Uncanny and just dial back the detail on the a little bit (to make it work for a monthly book)?
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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