By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco (pencils), Cam Smith, Dan Green & Nathan Lee (inks), Frank D’Armata (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)
The Story: Magneto needs a little PR work and the X-Men try to foil some fraudulent AIM agents.
What’s Good: This issue does a pretty good job of what the .1 issues are supposed to be for Marvel: Jumping on points that make for a nice place for new readers to see if they like what they see. Some of the .1s have really missed the mark as jumping on points (even if they were pretty good single issues), but this one does a nice job of establishing what the current status quo of the X-Men is.
I think this is also the first issue that Kieron Gillen has written solo, so this is the beginning of his run on Uncanny and it is always interesting to see what bits and pieces he keeps from Matt Fraction’s 2.5 year run on the title. From the look of things, he’s keeping things basically the same with the X-Men being in San Francisco and being generally accepted by this great and offbeat city, being on a first name basis with the mayor, etc. Another thing that Fraction started (and Gillen is keeping) is the X-Men using a PR professional to brush up their image, and of course, no X-Man is more in need of a PR scrubbing that Magneto.
Seeing the PR woman work with Magneto helps make this a “new reader friendly” issue. Us “experienced” readers have seen that Magneto came back to be a good guy about 20 issues ago. BUT, new readers probably didn’t notice this and would say, “Whoa! I thought Magneto was a bad guy!” So, the PR lady helps us to see Magneto in his new role where perhaps he still has the same sentiments, but that the world may have changed such that he doesn’t have to be as aggressive.
There is even a nice little bit of action as the X-Men deal with some questionable AIM agents.
What’s Not So Good: I didn’t “hate” the art, but I was expecting something nicer when I saw that Carlos Pacheco was penciling this issue. There are some pages that look pretty good and some that look kinda bad. I thought Emma looked pretty rough throughout, there’s a page where Wolverine’s head looks way too small, etc. It’s nitpicky stuff, but I’m kinda more of an “art guy” and I fixate on funny looking panels. I also hate to try to make up excuses, but the presence of three inkers (and three editors) would tend to indicate a certain rushed aspect to the art. From a coloring standpoint, I also don’t think Frank D’Armata’s highly rendered coloring is a great match for this art style. I’m mostly familiar with his coloring from Invincible Iron Man and I think he’s a better fit with a more photo-realistic artist like Larroca.
Conclusion: A nice .1 issue from a story standpoint. If this is the type of story that Gillen is going to tell, this is going to be very promising; this issue was nicely written. The art works perfectly fine form a storytelling standpoint, but there were a lot of panels that kinda bothered me. Probably most fans wouldn’t be quite as picky about a few panels and would grade this issue higher.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
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