Uncanny X-Men #360

Uncanny X-Men #360

Writing: Steve Seagle

Art: Chris Bachalo

What Went Down: On the anniversary of Magneto’s first battle with the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #1, a news reporter is covering the controversial launching of the Benassi rocket.  While the government insists it is just carrying camera equipment, skeptics are protesting the secrecy of the project and the nuclear components on the rocket. 

A mysterious bald figure in a wheelchair is collecting a new team of mutants to help him save the world.  There is the Grey King, a graduate assistant with telepathic dampening powers; Chaos, an autistic who can shoot psycho-plasmic force blasts; Mercury, who has liquid metal limbs; Rapture, a nun who is blue and has angel wings; Crux, an ice skater who can shoot fire and ice; and Landslide, a giant brawler.  At the end of the recruitment we see that it is none other than Professor X inviting the mutants to join the X-Men.

On a cruise ship named Titania, Colossus, Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler are enjoying a vacation after the disbanding of Excalibur.  The group discusses how it is the anniversary of the X-Men going public, and the ways that this event changed their lives.  Their reverie is interrupted by the new X-Men, who attack the cruise ship.  While Nightcrawler evacuates passengers and Colossus tries to plug a hole created by the fake X-Men, Kitty is captured by the group.

In the sewers of Washington D.C., Marrow, Rogue, Storm, and Wolverine are fighting a high tech security system.  Finding a door with an X on it, the group enters it to find a room outside a lab.  Although they were invited by sometime X-ally Peter Corbeau, it appears Corbeau has been abducted.  A tape left at the crime scene incriminates the X-Men. 

In a bunker in the Florida swamps, the evil X-Men are holed up with the captured Kitty.  Kitty is shocked that the mutants call themselves X-Men, and even more shocked to find that they have intimate knowledge of the real X-Men.  Professor X shows up to chastise Kitty for her behavior.

Inside the Lincoln Memorial, the four remaining X-Men meet with Val Cooper to discuss Corbeau’s disappearance.  Val offers the X-Men resources to help them clear their name.  Over in Salem, Nightcrawler and Colossus have gone to the mansion to enlist the help of the other X-Men.  The mansion is empty except for a shotgun wielding Cecilia Reyes, who is housesitting for the team.  After a brief misunderstanding, Cecilia leads the two heroes to the hanger where the original Blackbird is being housed after it was salvaged in Uncanny #353.  Kurt thinks he can fix it.

Back in Florida, Xavier tells Kitty that he cannot access his emotions because Bastion attempted to bind his functions to a computer with a virus.  Xavier’s detached behavior worries Kitty, as does the fact that he didn’t just ask for her help.  On the X-Men’s borrowed jet, the team observes a press conference outside the Cape Citadel rocket launch where a US director is seemingly assassinated.  We then get a scene where some shadowy government figures discuss how this was a fake distraction to take people’s attention away from what is really on the rocket.

Kitty manages to purge the virus from the computer.  Xavier rewards her by having his X-Men recapture her and prepare her for storage.  Up in the sky, the X-Men’s plane is dismantled in the air.  They assume Magneto is attacking, but it’s actually the fake X-Men.  A mid-air battle takes place, but Storm and Rogue lose their powers due to the Grey King.  Wolverine is left plummeting to the ground, but he is saved by Nightcrawler.  After saving the rest of the team, the Blackbird is shot down by Mercury.  

How It Was:  I had assumed I was done with gimmicky shiny foil cover double-sized issues, but lo and behold here we have two in a row.  Uncanny X-Men #360 and X-Men #80 are celebrating the 35^th anniversary of Uncanny X-Men #1; to my recollection these are the end of the foil-cover era for the X-Men.  These issues also mark some drastic changes to the books, mostly forced upon the writers by editors.  The team has been scaled back to a core cast of seven regulars, Uncanny and X-Men tie into each other regularly making for essentially a bi-weekly reading experience, and the former members of Excalibur are being shuffled back on the team. 

I’m torn about the inclusion of Nightcrawler, Kitty, and Colossus.  On the one hand I’m overjoyed as an X-Men fan to see them since these characters haven’t been on the main X-Men team in almost a decade (Excalibur lasted 125 issues).  On the other hand, it’s clear there is no real reason or story behind having them back on the team—somebody just thought it would be neat, which it is.  But there is something to be said for picking a cast because of potential stories to do and picking a team because people like the characters.  Worst of all, the majority of the new X-Men (Maggott and Cecilia), who had tons of story potential as the characters grew into their heroic roles, have completely been thrown out without any warning.  I really liked both these characters and the books feel more directionless without them.

But I should probably talk about the comic itself.  It’s double-sized, and fairly padded out, although there are some nice action sequences towards the end. A lot of the fluff revolves around the tedious newscaster exposition scenes that just aren’t very interesting.  There’s an incomprehensible attempt to make them more relevant by having a government conspiracy with a faked assassination that makes no sense at all.  If you wanted people to not pay attention to you’re high profile satellite launch, pretending to kill a member of the staff seems like it would be counterproductive.  Having the story take place at Cape Citadel is a nice call back to the first issue of the series, but many of these scenes feel tiresome, constantly reminding the reader about the rocket and that mutants are a divisive issue.  There’s a whole four-page sequence with Val Cooper that serves no purpose other than to say out loud that the X-Men are still hated and mistrusted, and for Val to give the X-Men a TV and a plane.  Also, the necessity of Kitty to “Xavier’s” plan seems arbitrary.

While I really like the homage to Giant-Sized X-Men #1 with Xavier collecting his new team, none of the characters really stand out.  Most of them do feel derivative, although that does tie into their origins, and none of them really come off as likable or menacing.  Plus Chaos, the autistic character, speaks in these one-word fragments, and I’ve never known any autistic person to do that.  Strangely it is played for comedy most of the time; Nightcrawler even mocks him for it at one point in the story.

Bachalo does a great job making the cruise ship and air battles seem frantic and chaotic.  The X-Men versus guns in the sewer feels a little forced for the sake of action, and I don’t understand how a door in the sewer leads to a vent on the surface where the X-Men can see the hole their friend was abducted in.  Peter Corbeau is pulled out from comic limbo for no other purpose then he was a scientist in that one space story in the seventies.  You know, the Phoenix Saga. 

The mystery over Xavier’s cold demeanor does work really well, and it’s about time the books actually addressed what is up with Charles.  And although I still think the Excalibur recruits feel forced onto this team, they do get some nice moments.  I enjoy the discussion of life without the X-Men where Kurt realizes he’d probably be dead.  There is also a sense of exhilaration from the team when Colossus and Nightcrawler first show up to save them. 

This issue could work a little better as a normal-sized issue.  Take away some of the exposition from the newscaster and Val Cooper, maybe a little more time for us to get to know the evil X-Men and care about them one way or the other, and this could’ve been one of the greats.  It does succeed in feeling like a new direction, it gets the characters right, and it is bookended by two solid action sequences. 

B-