Reviewing The World...: Uncanny X-Men

It had been a few weeks since I picked up books, so when I went in I discovered that another issue of Uncanny X-men had come out. It was actually pretty interesting, except for a scene with Johnny Storm and War Path. Xavier abused his powers more to Nightcrawler's amazement, but we did get to see Magneto paying his respects to one of his dead henchmen. There's a show down between the X-Men and the O.N.E., and the cliffhanger to the book is that one of the Morlock's is actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, undercover. Storm has some more pathetic dialog that fit the new persona Marvel's chosen for her. It's sad that Marvel had this great idea of putting her and Black Panther on the Fantastic Four, and not a single writer has done anything interesting with it. Not in X-Men, not in the FF book and definitely not in Black Panther! Reed and Sue were gone for like 4 issues and already they're on their way back, so it was a total waste of a great idea. Check out that cover though! Larroca is just gotten better and better, you can totally tell that he took a break and came back with a fresh prospective and really had taken his art to the next level. Still haven't read the Endangered Species storyline but Bangley's art stinks, hopefully he doesn't take over an X-Book.

Sinestro Corps after the break!

The War continues on in Lantern 22, and boy howdy was it exciting. One of the Lost Lantern's get's smoked, sadly he was pretty cool but that's Geoff Johns style, kill them while their cool! Superboy Prime hangs out for another issue and so does the Anti-Monitor and Cyborg Superman. AM promises CS that he'll kill him once they fulfill his real motives (Which were not revealed). Can I just say for a moment how bad ass Hal Jordan is? Oh I can? Hal Jordan is a bad ass! Not only does he still not take any crap from the Lost Lantern's, but he pretty much tells the entire Sinestro Corps Army to suck it. Going back to Superboy Prime, he's already eying the Earth which was cool, but he's got Superman's powers and a Sinestro ring... if he's not kicking and killing a lot of people by the next part I'm going to call Bullshit on him being in the book. Parallax is the bomb as well, he cuts down so many of the Lost Lantern's with just his words and playing on their one deep fear. The best is when he's saying it's as easy as the first time he and Jordan took down the LL's, and asking Jordan if he remembers screaming on the inside unable do doing anything about it. Great stuff. I can see what Johns' is going to do next though, he's going to go into the fear tanks and over come his one great fear so that Parallax and Sinestro have nothing over him and then beat more ass then ever before. Which will be cool, but I see it coming.

It would be an understatement to say that I was a little behind on reading Marvel Comics' mighty mutants. So I sat down and read eight issues of Uncanny X-Men starting with issue 481 and going to the most recent issue, 488. Finally someone freaking expanded the X-Men universe brought back some of the cool elements that Claremont did on X-Men before trying to ruin them. Burbaker and Tan brought back all that cool crap from the Phoenix Saga, and Shi'ar empire and made you go wow this shit is really cool! Now Vulcan may be the worst excuse for a character ever, but he's really the only reason to have as dope of a story as they did. I just wish everything he did wasn't predictable and boring.When he started off it was cool because you didn't know what his deranged mind was going to do, but then his mind kinda kept doing the same thing over and over... Kill, kill, kill some more and strangely fall in love... with Deathbird. Another thing that felt tagged on was the relationship between Vulcan and Deathbird, really it was just there because it needed to be there in order for parts of the story to happen.

I loved the fact that Burbaker brought back D'Ken... then he killed him, I should say Vulcan did but you probably were able to guess that already. What was extremely lame about D'Ken's death was that Vulcan brought him back from his coma, and he was about to become one of the best villains in the Universe again... oh well right? It was cool that they brought Major-General Ka'ardum back and the whole rich history of the Shi'ar, and their history with the X-Men. I do wish there was more with the M'kraan crystal. Darwin wins the award for cheesiest mutant powers beating out Wolverine. Nothing could stop him, nothing! At first it was cool but then it was just like, "Come on, what can't this Macgyver of mutant powers not do?" Something that was also total bullshit, was Cosair dying... now I was bummed when Cap died, even though I know there will be a conspiracy where he'll show up later and tell the world he's been working with Stark the whole time, but whatever. But Cosair was a total waste and of course guess who killed him? Yup, his bullshit third son Vulcan't, Vulcan't stop killing everyone that's not a major character in the book! The only redeeming factor was Cosair's lover getting super pissed and wanting blood, but Brubaker was already writing the next love story between her and Warpath. It was cool where they buried him too, but that was about it. Speaking of Warpath, he's pretty cool now. I was going to say very cool, but then I remembered all his shitty dialog and was like nah, he needs to be less whiney!

Nightcrawler is just boring, he doesn't date, he doesn'tSo are the Uncanny X-Men, uncanny once more? I'd have to say a little bit. The quality of the art is there again and hopefully it won't become the revolving door it's been in the past. Good comic book story-telling comes from a team. A writer that knows their artist, and an artist that can keep pushing themselves to impresses the writer, thus constantly putting out the best work of their life. Brubaker does a lot for the Mighty Mutants, but there was too much Fanboy cheese for my liking. Darwin's powers, Xavier getting his powers back, anything Storm said, Rachael's character in general, Vulcan killing everything not screwed down and the waste of characters that could have been. It was almost as if the idea was bigger than the amount of she mind-wiped Batman, I just view her as a wolf in sheep's clothing. The "cool factor" of Xavier is gone and I'm tired of him talking all the time and saying nothing. issues allotted for it. Two character's that I think have been over used and that I've just gotten tired of in general, is Nightcrawler and Xavier. Xavier didn't have one thing to say that was worth a damn and now that he's pretty much shown his true color's it's not really cool to watch him do any of his mind stuff anymore. It's like Zatanna in DC Comics, ever since lead, he doesn't do much of anything other than freak out and pray. Really only time will tell if Brubaker can restore greatness to the X-Franchise again, but Marvel has already started the revolving door artist policy for the book. For now at least Tan isn't doing the book and Larroca is on for at least another 2 issue before he starts working on Amazing Spider-Man, so who knows who they'll throw on it next.