Uncanny X-Men #508 Review

Overall, this comic has disappointed the Revolution. Matt Fraction’s stories have had the X-Men acting out of character.  One of the bright spots has been the art of the Dodsons. The current issue features Greg Land.  The recent issues with the battle against the Godzilla type monster have been an improvement.  Let us see if Fraction can continue with the summer blockbuster style of storytelling.

Creative Team
Writer: Matt Fraction
Pencils: Greg Land
Inks: Jay Leisten

Story Rating: 5 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 6.5 Night Girls out of 10

Synopsis: In a cemetery…the Red Queen is telling Regan that she can bring back her dead father. He will be more powerful than ever. Her sister tells Regan that the Red Queen can bring their father back if they ask her. Regan pulls out a gun and puts it to the Queen’s head. She changes it into smoke and says that it begins tonight in Tokyo.

In Tokyo…a man is talking to a woman. She says she can’t love him as long as he is a sword warrior. He casts aside his sword and pledges his love to her. Domino is watching them and smiling. Wolverine asked her to put flowers on a grave.

When Domino arrives, Chimera, Lady Deathstrike and Spiral are stealing a coffin. A furious fight ensues. Both sides draw blood. In the end, the villains escape through one of Spiral’s gateways. Domino calls Wolverine and asks him who Kwannon was.

At Graymalkin Industries in California…Hank has returned with the team of scientists he was gathering(Dr. Nemesis, Dr. Takiguchi, and Madison Jeffries). He has brought them together to try to reactivate the X-Gene. Dr. Nemesis believes they can fix the problem by using science.

Downtown San Francisco…the Red Queen uses her magic to heal Chimera. She received a chest wound in the fight with Domino. The Queen tells the others to take their positions.

Chimera wants to know what they are going to fill the dead girl with during the ritual. The Queen says what else do you use except for a live girl. Lady Deathstrike brings out Psylocke. The Queen tells them it is time to raise some hell.

Emma (White Queen) Frost and Kurt (Nightcrawler) Wagner are talking in a church. He teleports her from the church to the front of a classroom. It is filled with the Russian girls that the X-Men rescued in a previous issue. Colossus is there to translate. Emma, the Stepford Cuckoos, Karma and Empath all start screaming in pain.

Above Mt. Shasta…Northstar is falling through the sky with a snowboard. His speed causes a sonic boom as he falls onto the jump ramp. This jump sets various records.

Afterwards at the celebration, his sister Aurora shows up with Wolverine. Logan wants Northstar to join the X-Men. They need someone with his speed. Northstar accepts.

Hank is examining the psychics at Graymalkin. The Cuckoos say a massive psychic event has occurred.

Meanwhile the Red Queen proceeds with her ritual. At the end, Kwannon sets up. The Queen tells her she is in her new body and that is a start.

The Good: The high light of this issue was the fight in Tokyo. Fraction and Land choreographed a good fight scene in this part of the issue. Both sides were shown to be very dangerous.

I thought that this was an above average art job by Land and Leisten. In addition to the fight scene, I liked the art for the resurrection scene. It was appropriately creepy. The effects on the resurrection were spectacular.

The addition of Northstar is an interesting one for the X-Men. They have not had someone with his speed for a long time (if ever). I will be curious to see how he mixes with the other characters.

I was glad to see that the rescued Russians were not just forgotten. Too many times previous storylines are swept aside when the next issue comes around.

The Bad: I can sum this up with 2 words, the storyline. There was no coherent story for this issue. Fraction threw in a lot of little snipets and called it a story. How many different stories were mentioned but nothing really happened?

1. Angel’s return to his Archangel form. Last issue this was a major problem for Hank but it only earned 1 panel this time.

2. The team working on reactivating the X-gene. This was given 2 pages. What happened in those 2 pages? One of the scientists reveals that he does not believe in magic.

3. The Red Queen tells Regan that she can bring back her father. So what do our villains do after that? They go and steal the coffin containing Kwannon’s body. Not sure what this had to do with Regan’s father.

At least an attempt was made to start teaching the Russian girls.

Overall: Uncanny X-Men #508 was a well drawn issue without a story. This issue was a step backwards from the previous 2 issues.

4 thoughts on “Uncanny X-Men #508 Review

  1. When will we ever find the bottom and start climbing our way back up? I seriously do hate resurrections. What is the point of killing a character to have him/her to come back later? Wasn’t there a reason for their demise?

    (Side note: Kwannon gouged out her mechanical eyes before she died so try explaining that one!)

  2. Maybe they performed surgery (not too difficult with this crew, I’d reckon) and gave her new eyes before they resurrected her?

    I don’t know; it’s one of those things I’d prefer name-checked, but I can fill the gap in with my imagination very easily. Not too important to me.

  3. I kind of liked it, even though not much happens, it’s a setup issue mostly.

    Greg Land seriously improved his art since UXM 503, in my opinion. Although his Beast still looks like a stuffed animal toy and his smiling faces still look very, VERY creepy. Seriously, his happy smiles creep me out more than his evil ones.

    Fraction is still a hit-and-miss in this title. I really like all of the “science team”, and adding Kavita Rao was a great idea, considering her last exchange with Beast in Endangered Species. The reader gets the idea that Beast is really serious about solving the problem of the mutant gene. I never thought Rao as a villain, she just wanted to help, albeit in a semi-villainous kind of way, so her being added to the team doesn’t come out of character.

    I really liked the over-the-top dialogue between the Japanese couple, it was funny. Also a few bits like Domino’s scene and Northstar being in an extreme sports team.

    But there are still a lot of bumps on the road here. Does Fraction have to be so blunt and obvious about certain things? Okay, I get that Emma Frost is kind of shallow, but in UXM she is a caricature of what other writers such as Morrison and Whedon made her. Okay, I get that Northstar is soooo liberal, but does he have to talk about socialized health care, complain about his induction to the X-men team a gay thing (btw, how is a gay team member going to help the PR of a team that everybody hates because they are DIFFERENT?) and have a black boyfriend? Same with Karma. She is a lesbian, so she HAS to be sleeping with another woman. Such things make it seem that Fraction doesn’t even want the reader to think at all.

    My other problem is with Pryor’s Sisterhood. When are they going to finally attack? Yeah, I love a good buildup, but this is just taking too long. It’s like they want to add every B and C-list female X-men villains to their ranks before they attack.

    All in all, I trust that Fraction will give us a nice ending to this story. Remember that we still have Magneto lurking around, Emma’s Cabal connections, Shaw in a cell, and the outcome of Messiah War that will have to be incorporated here.

  4. Jimmy:

    You think the Sisterhood of Mutants is taking its sweet time? They’re starting to make their move now. And that means Magneto and the High Evolutionary are going to bide their time for at least a year’s worth of issues post-500…

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