Over at Uncanny X-Men, we have another new creative team, and this time a more permanent one.

Ed Brubaker already debuted on X-Men: Deadly Genesis, a six-issue miniseries which had a decent old-school X-Men vibe but suffered from the need to trudge through the mechanics of a ginormous retcon for several months.  With that out of the way, he's free to get on with the main event, a year-long story in which Vulcan returns to the Shi'ar Empire looking for revenge, and Professor X chases after him with a bunch of X-Men.

Thus far, it's simply Brubaker doing a solid, straightforward superhero book.  And that's fine by me; nothing wrong with just doing the X-Men and doing them well.  Unlike most of the writers we've had in recent years, Brubaker feels like he's writing a continuation of the X-Men saga which used to drive the titles, but largely fell by the wayside when Grant Morrison showed up.  Even Joss Whedon seems more interested in homaging the eighties than building on them.

Of course, you could well argue that this is a retrograde step.  It's certainly not the most innovative thing we've seen in the X-books.  But I have no complaints here.  Innovation is great.  Doing a straightforward X-Men story is also great, as long as you do it well.

This is a traditional "gathering of the team" opening issue, something that most recent creators haven't felt the need to bother with.  But it's a worthwhile exercise, because it means that this group have some semi-organic reason to be together, besides "the editors said so."   True, it means that we have an issue largely concerned with bringing Polaris back into the cast, all of a week after Peter Milligan wrote her out.  It's hard to see why they bothered at all.  But we have a proper team, a clear direction, well defined characters and some brightly coloured fighting.  These simple things make me happy.

Billy Tan's art was always a welcome relief when he turned up doing fill-ins over the last few months - the regular artist was Chris Bachalo, and it was a pleasure to have some pages that were easily readable.  There's a blandness and sameness to his faces that lets him down, but otherwise he's just fine for this sort of action story, paying some proper attention to the storytelling as well as the cool stuff.

Brubaker is trying to do the X-Men formula right, instead of putting some personal stamp on the book.  He's certainly doing more distinctive work elsewhere.  But people won't buy this comic because it's an Ed Brubaker book; they'll buy it because it's Uncanny X-Men done properly.  That's good enough for me.

Rating: A-

back | continue