By: Matt Fraction & Kieron Gillen (writers), Greg Land with Paul Renaud (pencils), Jay Leisten with Renaud (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jake Thomas & Jordan White (assistant editors), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: We wrap up both the Emma Frost v. Sebastian Shaw and X-Men v. Lobe storylines.
What’s Good: It’s really hard to come up with much that is “good” about this issue as it is the definition of “average” Big 2 superhero comics. But, one of the wonderful things about our What’s-good/What’s-not-so-good format here at WCBR is that it really makes you pick out something about the issue that works.
Forced to come up with something positive to accentuate with this part of the review, I’ll go with Emma’s “moment” against Sebastian Shaw. Those two characters have a LONG history together dating back to their days as allies during the Claremont/Byrne days on Uncanny, so seeing those two literally at each other’s throats was pretty sweet because you really did get the feeling that they wanted to kill the other and be DONE with it. That part was good.
Another thing that was good was the method that Cyclops comes up with to overcome Lobe and his mutant flu-virus. Although it was clever, it is precisely the sort of “Ha, ha, sucker! You just outsmarted yourself!” that we’ve seen from Cyclops enough before (e.g. the end of Utopia where Norman Osborn can’t pummel Cyclops because his TV cameras are rolling) that is just doesn’t seem that special anymore.
And, it was nice that this story didn’t star Wolverine! And, it even featured him haven’t a funny moment when he has to improvise since he can’t use his claws.
What’s Not So Good: These two stories were pretty tired stuff. I think the problem with the X-books right now is that they have too many EVENTS (Second Coming), events (Necrosha) and “events” (Curse of the Mutants). Between all of these “events”, any story line that is not part of any of these “events” feels like it is just filling time. Think of it this way, if Emma Frost is going to die, don’t you think it would in some variety of “event” and not in a generic issue of Uncanny? Ditto for any important character development. Until the X-office convinces us that they can do BIG things in generic issues, I’m not going to believe that it can happen.
Although the X-office does get someone to help Greg Land out, it doesn’t really help much. The problem with the Land/Leisten team was the repetitious nature of the faces (esp. on the women), but the technical aspects of the linework were actually pretty nice. This new team still has the repetitious faces, but mixed with the softness of Daniel Acuna (who I quite like sometimes) and it just doesn’t work at all.
The other rock that could be thrown at this issue is that there are just too darn many people involved. Look at that list of credits above! I don’t care if everyone is talented as hell, that is too many cooks in the kitchen because creative brilliance will cancel itself out much like if you try to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Queen, The Doors, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles at the same time. Probably the BEST thing that could happen to Gillen’s run on the X-Men is to get him one artist who can pencil and ink and an editor who barely talks to him.
Conclusion: It’s over. “Average” comics like this are the WORST. At least try to do something and fail because this is the kind of arc that causes me to drop titles. This wasn’t a very strong arc for Uncanny X-Men and it certainly didn’t need to be 5 issues long, but it IS over and we can move on from here with Kieron Gillen’s first solo story and Terry Dodson (yeah!) back on art.
Grade: C-
-Dean Stell
Follow Dean on Twitter.
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