Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Bill Tan/Clayton Henry
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $2.99 (x12)
The X-Men line had, in my opinion, been in the doldrums for several years. The quality of the line declined so much over the period after the departure of Casey and Morrison from their respective titles, that for the first time since I started reading comics again I dropped the whole line in disgust. Last year however saw a mini re-vamp, with fresh and, more importantly, talented writers taking over the reigns. The original, and parental X-men title, Uncanny was handed over to Ed Brubaker who, after single handedly propping up an ailing Wildstorm line with Sleeper and miraculously making Captain America contemporary, had more than earnt my respect as a writer. My initial excitement was dulled somewhat by the news that Billy Tan would be on art duties, but having seen some of the early work he was doing for the title I was persuaded that he might not be such a bad choice. The icing on the cake was the news that Brubaker was doing an X-men space epic, and this was epic not just in setting but in size. A 12 issue story arc. 1 year. 1 Story. I don’t even remember the last time I saw a 12 issue arc in a mainstream Marvel title. How could I possibly resist, curiosity alone demanded I pick it up.
Brubaker’s tale follows on immediately from his 6 issue mini-series Deadly Genesis in which we learn that Professor Xavier had been hiding the existence of a third Summer’s brother from Alex and Scott. The brother in question, Vulcan, had together with a team of young mutants been sacrificed by Xavier in an attempt to resuce the original X-men, who were at the time prisoner on Krakoa. Vulcan survived and returned during Deadly Genesis to wreak his revenge. Brubaker’s 12 issue epic sees Vulcan on a journey into the stars, to the Shi’Ar empire, where he intends to avenge his mother’s death and his mistreatment, but also to build himself an empire. The counterbalance to this story is obviously the X-men’s pursuit of him across the stars.
The story is on the whole well told. Pacing anything over 12 monthly issues is never an easy task, which is why it is rarely done. Brubaker does a good job here of making each issue somewhat self-contained and rewarding, while still allowing them to exist as part of the whole. As such this worked well in a an episodic form month to month, but gains extra weight when read back to back. Where Brubaker also succeeds is in creating a sense of the epic. During both Vulcan’s and the X-men’s journeys through space there is a sense of scale and grandeur befitting an epic story of this sort.
The artwork by Tan is a bit variable from issue to issue, and from panel to panel, but on the whole is very good. His characters are well defined and expressive, his spacescapes suitably epic and his fight scenes easy to follow. The second artist Clayton Henry has a very different style to Tan, and when I first saw he was stand in artist I was a bit concerned it would make the run feel disjointed. In the end the switch of artists was handled incredibly well. Tan drew the issues that dealt with the X-Men’s journey, while Henry drew those three issues that dealt with Vulcan’s journey. His work on these issues is nothing stellar, but the lines are clean and the colouring fresh, so it’s hard to complain too much.
It’s not all good news though, things fall down for this run initially where the cast is concerned, and again with the resolution in the final issue. The cast is fairly modest in size for an X-book, but is still just too large, and even with 12 issues to fill some characters were just chronically under used here. Nightcrawler appears to have been along for the ride only as a plot device that would allow the escape of certain characters at the end, while I’m pretty sure Warpath is just there to make for some cool splash pages. In addition we again see the perpetual need of current writers to introduce original pet characters into their stories. Here we get two, one a winner, one a loser. The winner is another member of the doomed young X team from Deadly Genesis, Darwin. Darwin’s power is to adapt to any situation; get it…Darwin…adapt. He’s a pretty cool character that combines almost limitless power with a fragile naivety of personality, and he has a lot of potential. The loser is a massive Shi’Ar, Korvus, with a giant sword that has a bit of the phoenix force in it. I’m not really sure what function he provides here other than love interest for Marvel Girl.
The resolution to this run is probably the major failing, and that’s because there really isn’t any resolution. After 12 issues we have one B-list character death, one House of M retcon and a splitting of the team; one half going home, one half still chasing Vulcan, who now has control of at least part of the Shi’Ar empire. Don’t get me wrong the story was good enough that I’m intrigued enough to want more from both halves of the team, I just expected that after a year of issues we’d see a THE END sign not a TO BE CONTINUED ONE.
It’s been said that Brubaker is not writer of team books by nature and neither the Deadly Genesis mini-series nor his Authority run did much to counter that argument. I think these 12 issues have gone someway to proving that he can write for teams and write well, although even here the best thread of the story is that dealing with Vulcan, the loner. That said, even with its faults this is the best run of Uncanny for some time, and I’d thoroughly recommend it to any X-fan, I’m just not sure I’d go as far as to recommend it to non X-fans.
Having recently finished a PhD in Immunology Ross is currently working for a UK biotech company. He lives in Cambridge where he reads comics, spends too much money on music and attempts to learn Portuguese. He owns at least 7 lightsabers, yet still manages to have a very attractive girlfriend who he misses very much, thus proving anything really is possible.