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.
Even though I prefer my art on the cartoony side, I do really enjoy Ibraim Roberson. His style is so rooted in realism that it is inevitable that you’ll get a few wonky panels that are technically accurate, but lacking in the energy that the scene calls for (see Logan & Teon sparring on page 2). But when his style is working (and it is in 90% of this issue and gets better throughout the issue), it is very visually attractive (see Laurie/Transonic flying away on page 4). I think a key with these guys rooted in realism is to find little things in the panel that can help add a sense of energy like having Hope’s hair blowing around while she’s riding in a Jeep (Roberson draws great hair). Charalampidis is a very good coloring match for Roberson. I’m really growing to like his softer coloring sensibilities: NO shiny highlights.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing major because this was a pretty stout issue. But, there are a few little ones… Such as why didn’t Cyclops have someone coming right behind Logan? I know they ran into some kind of jamming field, but usually there would just be a scene saying, “Emma lost psychic contact with Logan right HERE! Begin your search there. Go!” And in 5 minutes, Angel, Colossus, Rogue, Magneto and Emma would show up.
Another thing digging at me a little after reading this issue: Seeing the reason why Logan was being standoffish towards Hope makes me wonder why we haven’t seen him taking more of an interest in the Generation Hope kids generally. Sure, he is always sparring with Teon, but don’t the other girls need to learn some combat skills? Has there ever been a bad X-story that paired Logan with an inexperienced female mutant? Just have Logan attached to that duty and spare us the scenes of him leaping out of nowhere with his claws popped to save the day in the next X-story.
Conclusion: Early returns on Gillen’s Uncanny run are pretty good. He get’s these characters and is portraying them the way I like to see them. Nice art from the Roberson/Charalampidis team.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion