Uncanny X-men #529 - Redemptive Awesome

I admit, I've been pretty harsh on Matt Fraction despite my fondness for his work. Not harsh in the same way Michael Vick is fond and harsh on dogs, but I don't deny setting a pretty unreasonable standard for him. It's hard not to. This guy is in a position every X-men fan would surrender a left nut to have. He's actually in a position of power to determine the course of the X-men comics. For the most part, he's steered that course pretty well. He led the X-men to San Francisco and he set up Utopia. He did this and made it pretty freakin' awesome in the process. For that he deserves some credit.

Where my panties start riding up my ass crack is his blatant and often unmistakable flaws. As a writer, he's about as objective as Fox News. He wears his bias on his sleeve and I admit it bugs the living hell out of me. We all have biases, but when we're in a position of power like Matt Fraction is we have a Spider-Man inspired responsibility to keep those biases from affecting our work. Matt Fraction for whatever reason seems to view that responsibility the same way Homer Simpson views his job as safety inspector at a nuclear plant. He's in it for the donuts and an excuse to get out of the house. In that he's written some fairly contrived stories and made no secret about which characters he loves (Cyclops, Pixie, and Emma Frost) and which he could do without (Storm, Beast, Hope, and damn near every other X-man).

Few have suffered under his pen more than Emma Frost. Since she left the comforting embrace of Joss Whedon, she's turned into a walking punchline with big tits. Under Fraction's pen she lost her edge faster than Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. She has become Emma-lite/the blond Jean Grey. In Uncanny X-men #527 she took six steps down and became a flat, unfeeling, irrational bitch. She was essentially a young Madonna. It was so blatant it took away from the ongoing story with the Five Lights, which involved Hope seeking out the five new mutant signatures that emerged after Second Coming. It has limited my enjoyment of Uncanny in a big way, but I've always given Matt Fraction a chance because no matter how many missteps he takes in his books he always manages to pull together a surprise helping of awesome to set him apart as one of Marvel's most exciting scribes. Uncanny X-men #529 gives him a chance and he makes damn good use of it.

The book starts like the previous two in that it introduces a new mutant. This one goes by Teon and he's about as complex as a dog...literally. This guy somehow ended up in Miami Beach where he's prowling for women like a dog in heat. In other words he's blending in perfectly. He has no inner monologue or inner musings. He's very basic in a fight, flight, or mate sense. Again, he blends in perfectly with the Miami night life except he has the strength and temperament of Kanye West on PCP.

Hope enters the scene with Rogue and her growing team, which include the other new mutants. Here Fraction throws in some old fashioned stereotyping, having the younger mutants get all giddy and upbeat about being at the beach. They talk about swimming and malls the same way Japanese school girls talk about Hello Kitty. It's not very inventive, but it does help remind the readers that these mutants aren't X-men. They're kids and they're still learning how to be X-men. The burden falls on Hope to teach them.

We leave that less than mature moment and get into a much more mature issue with Emma Frost. In the last issue she was in an especially bitchy state and plans to take it out on Sebastian Shaw, a guy who in many ways made her who she is. Few are deserving of a wrath like Emma's, but Shaw is the exception that proves the rule. At the end of the last issue she enlisted the help of Kitty Pryde for reasons that would confuse the Watcher on an acid trip. Now she enlists the help of Fantomex, who is not only excited at the challenge. He uses it as a chance to hit on Emma Frost. I would say this is another lame stereotype, but honestly...pretty much every guy in his position would do the same.

Now somewhere at this point is a transition. Fantomex goes to get Madison Jeffery's help at getting Danger to let her guard down by seducing her. Apparently he has a robot fetish. I would have a joke about that, but let's face it that's not the craziest fetish anyone can have in the X-men comics. There are Japanese anime series that make that seem like an animated Disney movie form the 50s.

That's not the strange part. What is strange is that there's some scene in Chinatown that involves men dressed like slightly cooler agents from the Matrix and they sport Jamie Madrox type powers. Now there's no clue as to which plot this relates to, if any. It's confusing and seemingly unnecessary. But it's there and it doesn't take up too much ink so it (barely) serves as somewhat of a bridge.

The focus goes right back to Hope. She, Rogue, and the three other lights get a hotel room and discuss what they know about Teon. They offer a nice rundown without it sounding too much like narration. Apparently Teon is like a predator, going after alpha women who are rich and well-educated while beating the shit out of their boyfriends. Basically, the people Paris Hilton doesn't have listed as Facebook friends. He's got superhuman endurance and healing that allowed him to hop a plane to America where he kept going on his prowl. He sounds like an easy guy to catch since he goes after the kind of women that make it onto TMZ every other night. He takes it a step further though. He saves Hope the trouble of finding him and basically seeks her out, but isn't sure whether to fight her or fuck her. It's like what happens the first time every guy sees Lady Gaga.

There's a brief scene in between where Madison Jefferies distracts Danger by asking her out on a picnic. It's a sweet and only slightly disturbing scene, but it is what it is. It's just filler for the fight scene that's about to unfold with Hope. Not saying it's a bad thing. It still works, but just isn't subtle. Very little of this book is. If you're reading it for the subtlety then someone has played a cruel and hilarious joke on you (unless you too have a robot fetish, in which case you would be masterbating rather than reading this review).

We go right back to the fight with Hope and Teon, which is done pretty damn well. Whilce Portacio's artwork really shines here and for the first time we see the Five Lights (or three at the moment) work together with their new powers. It's sloppy as one would expect and Teon doesn't go down easy. He shows just how inexperienced Ida, Gabrial, and Laurie are in how he makes them look as inexperienced as their age. It's Rogue and Hope who show them how it's done. Like the other lights, Hope needs only to cop a good feel to complete their mutation. This turns Teon from a raging animal to a domesticated dog. He essentially goes from rampaging college student to a domesticated husband in the span of an instant. All the women on the View would soak their panties in seeing this scene. It accomplishes the equally impressive task of bringing together the next to last of the five lights.

With this plot almost ending, Fraction already sets he stage for the next arc. It seems to come out of nowhere. Cecilia Reyes reveals that there's a strange little epidemic striking Utopia. An illness is spreading like the flu among the mutants. There's already talk of a pandemic. Again, not so subtle. It doesn't even drop any hints about whether or not this is connected to those wannabe agents of the Matrix that showed up earlier. But it is another plot that seems to be pulled out of nowhere. At least like the previous contrived plot, it only lasts a page and does offer some new promise for the next issue.

We finally get back to Emma Frost, who is looking as snide as she should be in the face of another somewhat contrived plot. Apparently, Kitty Pryde is now able to walk and talk again. The X-Club concocted a special suit for her to wear. It looks just like her old uniform with a Mysterio style fish bubble on top. Again, it comes from nowhere. Seriously, how long has the team been working on this? Did they really make that many breakthroughs off panel? It's starting to feel like Fraction is rushing the plot and it doesn't feel right. Even so, it's nice to see Kitty Pryde up and running again. She's also back to her witty exchanges with Emma, which is always a plus.

With Madison Jefferies now fully distracting Danger, they meet up with Fantomex after he abducts Shaw. The strange thing is Danger knows he's been taken, but she doesn't do anything about it. Her reasons are actually somewhat compelling. In trying to rehabilitate the X-men's prisoners, she reasons that they need to be given a chance at redemption. Some are beyond it, but she's not sure Emma Frost is one of them. By letting her take Shaw, she's giving her a chance.

And she seems to make good use of it. The next scene finally gives Emma a moment she hasn't had under Fraction in a long time. Instead of being a cold-hearted bitch or just filler for Cyclops's random displays of awesome, she shows some personality. She finally talks about how she feels on those she's lost like Nightcrawler. She mentions how all this stress caused her to have two gray hairs. It doesn't seem like much, but the way she talks about it makes it something very symbolic. It shows that for all her callous attitude, this sort of mess is getting to her. It's striking her on a personal level and she doesn't seem to know how to process it. This is the kind of Emma Frost that's a far cry from her outright bitchiness that dominated Uncanny X-men #527 and it's very welcome. It seems fitting that this is where the issue ends. There's no hint as to what they're going to do with Sebastian Shaw at this point. Except now there's more of an underlying reason behind it and it makes the next issue all the more worth picking up.

It really happened. Matt Fraction did it. He wrote an issue where Emma Frost was nicely characterized. For once I can't bash him for this flaw that has dominated so much of his run. He took a story with Emma that was really going nowhere and made it interesting again. That's really saying something. This on top of the Teon makes for a pretty solid issue. There were still the same irregularities and inconsistencies that the other books had, but they were much less apparent here. The story is moving forward. The plot is progressing. You can't ask for much more of a writer and for once I kneel before Matt Fraction's greatness.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement. He still has a long ways to go before he can prove that he's capable of writing balanced characters like Emma Frost. He also has to work on the little things so that when Kitty Pryde suddenly has a suit that allows her to walk around without phasing, it doesn't feel contrived. He's not the only writer who struggles with this. Most do, but his is to a greater degree. He puts together a decent plot that does work on most levels. It simply lacks the refinement to make it truly awesome.

I want to give this book a higher score because Fraction really brought something back to Uncanny with this issue. Yet I can't place it in the same league as other books just yet. I need to maintain some perspective here so the best score I can give Uncanny X-men #529 is 3.5 out of 5. It's above average, but not by much. It has potential to be truly awesome. It just has to be realized. Fraction has a lot to work with here. It's not clear if this story is going to truly progress, but with issues like this Matt Fraction deserves a chance! Nuff said.

Uncanny X-men #527 - Mixed Sentiment (and Emma Being a Bitch Again)

Matt Fraction's Uncanny X-men run has been a lot like that crazy drug dealer you knew in college. The guy kept selling you decent pot and the occassional blow, but occasionally he did slipped something really shitty into the mix that fucked up your buzz. But since he was the only game in town so you didn't have a choice. It was always a gamble whether you were going to get high on the awesome or frustrated with a painfully lackluster buzz. Uncanny X-men is like the weed in this case in that every drag on the joint is hit or miss. Matt Fraction has demonstrated a lot of talent when it comes to telling a compelling story and trying novel things in his work, but the man has some blatantly overt flaws in his methods that he not only flat out ignores. He never seems to try to improve. While other X-writers have some semblance of characterization to these famous figures, Matt Fraction's characterization is so skewed it's like mixing paint thinner into a bottle of whiskey. It may get you fucked up, but it will make you sick to your stomach.

Before and since Second Coming, Matt Fraction has been defined by his blatant bias towards Cyclops and Emma Frost. He seems to go out of his way to make them seem so cool even when it comes at the expense of characterization. He's also the equivalent of a topless cheerleader for the Cyclops/Emma relationship that's been unfolding since the end of the Morrison run. Now this relationship has had it's share of moments under the likes of Joss Whedon and Ed Brubaker. But since Fraction got his hands on it, the relationship has been handled like a bad fanfiction writer (I should know because I actually am a bad fanfiction writer). He's essentially turned Emma Frost into a new less trashier Jean Grey. She has none of the edge Whedon gave her. She's just the hot blond Scott carries around with him to show how awesome he is. That's an insult to both Emma and Scott and it's made Uncanny painful at times.

But there was some reason for hope. In this series Matt Fraction also set up Namor as being part of the X-men. Not only that, he revealed that Namor and Emma had a history and by history I mean they bumped uglies a few times back in the day. They had some flirtatious moments and there was a lot of possibility for a new wrinkle in the Scott/Emma relationship. This fell to the wayside for a bit during Second Coming, but I did ask him directly in an X-Position interview if it would be revisited and he said yes in his own charming way. Then the cover for Uncanny X-men #527 came out and it looks like he would make good on his word, but this is Matt Fraction. Like any bias fanfiction writer, he's willing to sacrifice character development to shake those pom-poms for his favorite pairing. So despite what the cover implies with Emma and Namor, that doesn't mean this issue will deliver.

With all this in mind there is still a good story here. It starts off simply continuing the whole Five Lights saga. In the previous issue the X-men found their first new mutant and Hope managed to help kick start her powers and gain a devoted follower. Now they're after the next mutant, who happens to be in Mexico City. Like the previous mutant, Laurie, this guy is in school and he's in the middle of taking a test. Now I had to put this book down for a moment and call my therapist due to the painful memories this image gave me, but once I pulled it together I could follow along. This unfortunate kid basically goes through what so many of us went through in school during a big test. He completely freaks out. Only this freak-out involves mutant powers.

While Psylocke and Cecilia are trying to help this kid, Emma Frost is enjoying a nice, fancy meal in Napa Valley with Tony Stark. In addition to Namor, Tony Stark is another Marvel heavyweight that she's spread her legs for. She visits him as if she's on a date with him, but there isn't much flirting. Even though they look like they're dressed for a Jenna Jameson porno, their discussion is serious. Tony Stark talks about mutants being integrated into the greater superhero community. Instead of a minority, they have a chance to be part of the bigger picture. It's not an unreasonable idea, but it involves not keeping secrets and while it's hard to tell through Whilce Portacio's art that doesn't jive with Emma.

In the very next scene, Emma's demeanor goes from charming and flirtatious to that of a meth addict in withdrawal thinking the CIA is coming to shove little green monsters up her nose. She essentially storms down into the brig where Danger (one of Joss Whedon's awesome X-men legacies) has been keeping an eye on some of Utopia's guests. One of them is Sebastian Shaw.

Now why is this a big deal? Well going back to that while secrets lecture that Tony Stark hit on, Emma's been keeping a big ass secret from the X-men and Namor. She was originally supposed to kill Shaw for Namor and she used her telepathy to make it look like she did. But for whatever reason, she didn't. Instead, she kept Shaw isolated and psychically sedated. That's like keeping an angry tiger restrained by a flimsy rope while shooting it with adrenaline and forcing it to watch the Howard the Duck movie repeatedly. Yet Danger assures Emma that Shaw is secure and Emma takes no comfort in it. If anything, she just acts like a total bitch and not in a very witty way either as Morrison and Whedon has described her.

While Emma is exercising her latent douche-baggery, the story with the new mutant in Mexico is still unfolding. The kid is still freaking out like the Flash on a drinking binge. Psylocke and Cecila keep trying to restrain him, but this kids power seems to involve vibrating at super-high frequencies that it's damn near impossible for him to be calm or even be visible. In that sense it's like having the worst possible shivers multiplied by a billion. It gets so bad that Psylocke has to contact Cyclops, who is still in Tokyo with Logan looking for another mutant. They have to report that the boy has vanished while not leaving his room. Lucky for them, Scott and Logan are drinking so when he gets this news it doesn't bother him that much. Because let's face it, when you're shit faced you could have someone pounding your foot with a hammer and it wouldn't bother you.

This leads to a long overdue character building scene between Cyclops and Wolverine. These two guys have always been at odds and rarely is there a time in the X-men's history that these two don't want to strangle each other. But they are capable of having some decent conversation. It helps that Wolverine is the Obi Wan Kanobi of getting shit faced and being hammered allows him to bring up an important point.

Since Second Coming, the X-men lost some very good friends. Logan himself lost Nightcrawler, who he considered to be his best friend. Strangely, he doesn't harbor too much of a grudge against Cyclops because Nightcrawler knew what he was getting into. But he makes it a point to Cyclops that in the war for the mutant messiah, they won. Hope is safe. New mutants are showing up. But Cyclops is still in war-mode. He won't let himself feel any of the emotions that go along with it. Now Logan giving a lecture on emotions may be like Paris Hilton giving a lecture on quantum physics, but it's not an invalid point. Cyclops lives and breathes the conflict that he's been trained to fight. Problem is, nobody has trained him to stop. It's like how the military teachers soldiers to kill, but it can't unteach them. It's a good point to make and one that Fraction hopefully doesn't completely forget about.

This was a nice scene of rare character development. You would hope the same attention would be given to Emma Frost and her unfolding story. While Emma does get an opportunity in the form of a request from Colossus, she doesn't make much use of it. She just uses it as an opportunity to be a complete bitch in a non-charming way. It's not like Colossus is asking her to dye her hair red and tattoo a Phoenix on her ass. He just wants her to use her telepathy so he can talk to Kitty, who has been rendered mute since she returned in Uncanny X-men 522. Even though she has little reason to begrudge Colossus, she's a total bitch to him even though she agrees to help.

Even though she goes through with it, she still finds ways to be a total douche-bag. After it's over, she goes so far as to call Piotr a Russian Hick. It could be lingering bitterness because of how she and Kitty were always at each others' throats during Joss Whedon's Astonishing run. But she did manage to get a message across and Emma made it sound like it was a total shot at her overblown, surgically enhanced ego. In the end, Kitty just wanted to tell Piotr she loved him. Piotr returned the sentiment, making Emma come off as an even greater douche.

At this point this story needs a break in Emma's bitchiness. Usually the best counter to Emma Frost's attitude is a hot redhead with green eyes and Phoenix powers. Enter Jea-I mean Hope Summers (sorry, I still can't tell the fucking difference even though Marvel seems to have no problem with it). She arrives with Laurie in Mexico City and tries to confront the new mutant herself. Somewhere along the line she picked up a new X-jacket in the process (which I think is worth pointing out looks a lot like the jacket Jean used to wear) and essentially does what she did with Laurie. That is to say, she just reaches out and blindly walks into the shit storm hoping for the best. That may not be very messiah-like, but since she's a teenage girl she gets a little slack.

Emma Frost, however, deserves no such slack. As implied by the cover, Emma does meet up with Namor. Except it isn't as hot as the cover implies. Namor just catches up with her at a sushi bar in Atlantis. I know that sounds like pork bar-be-que in the Middle East, but considering the food source the underwater world has it makes about as much sense as anything. Namor isn't all that subtle in the way he addresses Emma either. He makes it clear that he still wants to bone her. That alone makes him the most honest guy in the Marvel Universe because there aren't many men who don't want to bone Emma Frost. He also takes a shot at Scott Summers, which Emma understandably counters. But Namor doesn't miss a beat and continues to question him in a way Emma clearly isn't. Like Logan, he called him out for being the man with the plan when the war was going on. But now that the war is over and the messiah child is on their side, what kind of man would he be now?

It's a good question to ask. With this conflict over, is Scott Summers going to be the same man? If not then can Emma Frost keep feeling the same way about that man? For much of their relationship, the X-men were struggling with the effects of M-Day. She seemed to get a pussy boner at this large and in charge mentality he took on. But that mentality may not work anymore. So where does that leave them? It would be a great conversation to continue and Emma's reaction would be very telling, but the scene is fucking cut short. So that image on the cover never even happens. All Emma and Namor do is talk, but at least it's not completely without substance.

While Emma's status as the alpha X-women is being questioned, Hope Summers is making the case to take her place. In Mexico City she's still trying to get this new mutant into some semblance of stability. She still looks about as coordinated as any teenager would, but like some teenagers she does come through. She manages to grab onto the guy while he's vibrating and just like Laurie in the previous issue, that's all it takes. It makes for an awkward moment because once the kid is okay, he's just as drawn to Hope as Laurie was. He even hints that he wants to nail her (not knowing yet that Scott Summers has all dibs on redheads). Awkwardness aside, the second light is now secure and there are three left to find. Hope is two for two and on a roll.

The same can't be said for Emma Frost. After chatting with Namor and getting her sushi on, she pays another visit to the brig where Sebastian Shaw is still in a psychically induced dreamworld. Emma doesn't have much to say to him other than to "sleep tight" and that's about it. There's no real hint that what Danger, Namor, or Colossus told her had any affect on her. She's basically went from charming date to total bitch to more total bitch to a dismissive bitch. That's a lot of bitch for one issue. While Emma may be a bitch by her own nature, another part of that nature involves wit and charm. In this book she had absolutely none of it. For anyone who was hoping Emma would get the spotlight again in Uncanny after being sidelined for much of Second Coming, this should be pretty disappointing because it doesn't just make her a bitch. It makes her completely unlikeable compared to her Morrison, Whedon, and Warren Ellis version.

So going back to my earlier rant about Fraction's bias towards Emma and the Scott/Emma relationship, does this issue give it some depth? Definitively...not really. You get the sense that Matt Fraction is really trying to make Emma shine in the way she has with other writers. You can't fault a guy for doing so. But while his intentions may be noble, the execution was not. The only way Emma distinguished herself in this issue was by being a complete bitch and not in the way that makes her such a compelling character. There's being a bitch and there's being an outright douche-bag. Emma didn't just flirt with that line. She soared over it with a fucking rocket.

And the relationship aspect? Well Namor did question Emma's feelings for Scott and she responded as anyone would expect her to. She defended him, but not very convincingly this time. Namor kept pushing the point, trying to sew seeds of doubt into her emotions. If anyone other than Matt Fraction was writing this series, I would be excited about the possibility of some tension within the Scott/Emma relationship. But since Fraction has yet to demonstrate that he can write through his fanfiction writer-esque biases for the pairing there's really not a lot to be excited about. Here's the most likely way he'll end it...Emma and Scott will just get together and completely forget about any conflict whatsoever that Namor and Logan brought up. That's it. Writers like Grant Morrison and Chris Claremont never passed up a chance to fuck with the Scott/Jean relationship even though it had 40 years of continuity and decades of marriage behind it. But since Scott got with Emma, nobody (especially not Matt Fraction) even entertains the notion that these two should have some tension. They'll gladly take shots at long established couples like Scott/Jean and Peter/Mary Jane, but not Scott/Emma. That's not just lame storytelling. It's fucked up hypocrisy.

But I digress. Even if nothing comes of this potential story with Emma Frost, this was still decent issue. It certainly improved over the shotty transitions in the last issue. It flowed much nicer and the dialogue was still crisp. Portacio's art is still inconsistent in some areas, but it still has plenty of visual appeal. It's not a terrible improvement over the previous issue, but it's not worse either. Uncanny X-men #527 gets a 3 out of 5. Fraction has a chance to develop the Emma/Namor plot and really make up for the characterization issues that he's been panned for by so many people on message boards. However, given his history it's not very likely. But still, I try to be an optimist. The man has a chance and I'm willing to give it to him. Nuff said!

Uncanny X-men #526 - Inconsistent Awesome

So Second Coming is over and done with and Marvel is hyping up the post Second Coming world like it's some hip new weight loss product that involves eating chocolate and doing lines of cocaine off a titty dancer. After the sheer breath of awesome that Second Coming offered, it's necessary that the nature of the book change and Uncanny X-men #526 by Matt Fraction is supposed to reflect that change. This is supposed to begin the first critical step towards a new era in X-men, one that isn't tied down by M-Day and playing up all those depressing M-Day stories about extinction. Because let's face it, the whole extinction angle got old and made you go on one too many drinking binges (although I did get a personal thank-you note from the makers of Shmiernov Vodka so it wasn't completely without merit).

That makes the stakes pretty high for this issue and usually Matt Fraction does deliver. He even has help from an old school X-men artist in Whilce Portacio. There were a number of plot threads opened by Second Coming and a few loose ends that were never tied up. They're not going to leave them dangling, are they? They're not going to induce more drinking binges? My liver already hates me enough. But after reading this issue, I'm left with mixed feelings and entirely new reasons to get shit faced.

The premise of the issue stems from the final pages of Second Coming. At the end Cerebra detected five new lights representing the first new mutant signatures since M-Day that weren't Hope. Now the mission is to find these lights and do what X-men do best, which is dress them up in spandex and get them deals with Victoria's Secret. The first light appears on the very first few pages and she isn't exactly thrilled with her new powers. Then again, a lot of mutants didn't have the luxury of going through a smooth transition. Add to that the complication of being a teenage girl and well...you know what, I've had enough traumatic experiences with crazy teenage girls that I don't even want to get into it. My therapist would have me comitted.

While the X-men are closely monitoring this girl (and by monitoring I mean stalking her as if she were a drug dealer), another plot from Second Coming emerges. This one involves Hope Summers, the familiar looking mutant messiah. At the end of the Uncanny Heroic Age one-shot, she expressed a desire to find her biological parents. Since the beginning of Messiah Complex, the heritage of Hope has been a mystery and prone to wild speculation that involves theories involving Sinister, the Hellfire Club, Jean Grey, Madelyn Pryor, and George W. Bush. So finding out the truth should be a huge deal, right? Hope sure thinks so and overpacked like she's about to hike through the fucking Sahara desert.

After getting Hope out of the whole Apocalyptic future mindset, he send her off to Alaska with Rogue, Dr. Nemesis, and Cypher. This bleeds into a somewhat bizarre and disjointed transition that may require you either read over the part another three times or take a hit of shrooms (I recommend the latter) because it gets pretty confusing. Here's what happens: on one page Cyclops and Emma are talking about sending Hope to Alaska and Cyclops going on a mission with Logan to Tokyo while on that exact same page it shows Cyclops already in Tokyo. Skip to the next page and Cyclops is still with Emma and she makes some painfully lame comment about "rad bromance" that simply couldn't have come from a professional comic writer like Matt Fraction and then on the same fucking page it shows Emma paying a visit to Tony Stark (who she has slept with in the past) looking like she's Corella Devile. Either some panels are missing or someone has the organization skills as George W. Bush.

This begins an unfortunate trend I'm afriad. I could forgive Matt Fractions lame dialogue as a hiccup or a product of insomnia, but the way it's organized on the pages is a fucking joke. Most comics, even the shitty ones, are nice enough to make a smooth transition so you're not confused on how the fuck the characters got to a certain state. Here it's not just disjointed. It's confusing and fucking lame. I don't know who is to blame, Fraction or Portico, but someone screwed the pooch and then strangled it for good measure.

This kind of mindfuck almost makes it hard to feel the emotion of the next scene, which involves Hope finding out about her parents. Now you would think that since this has been such a big mystery, she would have to fight for the truth. But no. Cypher just hacks it out of a computer or fucking Googles it for all we know to find out that the name of Hope's mother is...Louise Spalding. Yep, that's it. That's the big revelation Marvel has been keeping under wraps. It would be a lot more powerful if it actually took some sort of challenge to find this information, but they essentially do a George Michaels and pull it out of their ass. It's so underwhelming it takes away from the emotion of Hope visiting the grave of her mother.

Now this would have been a great time for some killer robots or alien hit men to show up, but again the outcome is underwhelming. Louise's mother, Hope's grandmother, shows up at the grave and not by coincidence either. It turns out Cypher figured out that little tidbit as well. She's no killer robot, but she does invite Hope over for a bite to eat. Because that's always a safe activity, inviting a total stranger from a graveyard into your house.

This begins a somewhat smoother scene transition, but the scene it transfers to has jack shit to do with anything that's been established in this books so far. It's just a brief shot of Colossus and Dr. Rao looking over Kitty Pryde, who has been in a state of permanent phasing since Magneto brought her back in Uncanny X-men 522. Not much happens. Colossus complains about not having his lover in a state he could feel up and Dr. Rao gives him the plain runaround, which essentially is her way of saying "There's nothing I can do." It's a grossly predictable scene that would have been great if it just didn't feel so out of place. Hell, this feels like a scene that should have been in an earlier issue and it's only now that they're getting to it? Did they really have to wait for this moment so that it completely loses it's punch? Kitty fans, Colossus fans, and Kitty/Colossus fans may be inclined to storm the offices of Marvel over how bland this scene turns out.

This scene is essentially filler for the next big moment when Hope gets to learn more about her mother. Apparently, she was a fiery personality. She was a redhead like Hope who worked as a firefighter. She seemed to have this odd fixation with running into burning buildings and fighting fire, which should sound familiar to another certain redhead with a fiery disposition. Add to that she wasn't married and seemed to have no interest in having a boyfriend. That adds some added mystery because the one piece of information Cypher couldn't find on Google was the identity of Hope's father. That was left completely unanswered. On top of that, guess who Louise Spalding looks like? I'll give you a hint: she has red hair, green eyes, and a fiery persona. If the name Jean Grey didn't cross your mind, then light yourself on fire and jump out of a 33 story window because you have failed to use your brain and do not deserve to enjoy it's fruits.

This brings me to the other elephant in the room with this scene. First off, it's yet another Jean Grey hint. Louise Spalding and her tendency to fight fire reeks of a Jean Grey knock-off and Hope's established connection to the Phoenix Force only adds to that hint. Second, why the fuck was this meant to be such a big ass mystery if Hope's mother was just some firefighter? Why keep it a secret? It's missing out on a golden opportunity to further Hope's mystery and instead you get this patently lame revelation that only adds to speculation that Jean Grey and Hope are connected. Not only that, Hope being a single woman in Alaska who looked like Jean resembles another character. Her name is/was Madelyn Pryor and she was a clone of Jean Grey. Add to that a lack of a father and you've got Marvel hinting yet again at a Hope/Jean connection that has been teased and re-teased so many times that it's getting fucking annoying. I know I'm ranting a bit here, but if Hope Summers was meant to be her own character why drop all these Jean Grey hints? She has red hair, green eyes, and the Phoenix Force. No other Marvel redhead fits that description so perfectly as Jean Grey. Yet Hope is supposed to be her own character? I call bullshit! Either she's some new incarnation of her or a total Jean knock-off. The more Marvel leaves this question unanswered the more bullshit it acquires and if you acquire enough bullshit pretty soon the stench becomes too powerful.

This bland revelation is made even shittier by another spotty scene transition where Cyclops (wasn't he supposed to be in Toyko?) orders Hope, Rogue, and the others to meet up with Iceman and Angel to confront this new mutant. There's no clear passage of time here. It looks like Hope and the others essentially teleported to the scene, which seems pretty fucked up given that Nightcrawler and Ariel are dead and all. They don't partake in much discourse either because the new mutant fucking jumps off a rooftop. Hope being the mutant messiah and all tries to save her and when she does, some of that messiah mojo kicks in.

What happens next looks like another manifestation of Hope's powers. It has that ominous Phoenix glow to it (seriously, the Jean hints are just not getting interesting anymore) and as soon as she touches the girl, she goes through a butterfly-like metamorphosis. When she emerges she turns into what appears to be a cross between Mystique and a fish-woman. It's not terribly original, but it is a pretty awesome look for a new mutant and Portacio does flex his artistic muscle with her. Her powers aren't exactly clear, but she can fly and look awesome so that's really all that's needed to cheer her up.

What happens next is yet another head-scratcher. This girl who looked like a dying cancer patient is now ecstatic. She's ecstatic like she just had sixteen consecutive orgasms in the span of five seconds. Not only that, she practically swoons over Hope and says she'll now follow her to the ends of the Earth like some Charles Manson cult follower. It's insanely creepy and the dialogue is so fucking ridiculous that you're tempted to both scoff and vomit at the same time.

And that's how this issue ends. They find the girl, Hope kick starts her powers, and now she's got a stalker. It sounds like it could be awesome on paper, but the way it's put together is terribly underwhelming. Add to that the lame way in which Hope discovered her parents and you've got a comic that stalls at a moment when the series needs to excel for the new status quo. It's immensely disappointing and does not bode well for the new era in X-men comics.

Now I loved Second Coming and I was excited to see what the aftermath had to offer, but if this is all Marvel could come up with then call me a lemon because I'm officially sour. They've really dropped the ball on Hope by further dragging out the Hope/Jean mystery. Hell, nobody has even commented on the fact that she's a redhead who manifested Phoenix powers. Even Emma, who saw this, didn't say a word. It was like nothing happened! If Marvel doesn't want to bring back Jean then at least make it clear that Hope has no such connection to her and stop dropping hints that she may be some incarnation of her! She already looks like her and wields the Phoenix. Now her biological mother looks like her and has a passion for fire and her father is still a mystery. If that was meant to squash the Hope/Jean mystery, it failed miserably and is drawing out something that got old at least two crossovers ago.

On top of the endless Hope/Jean mess, the pitiful organization of this book was painful at times. Scenes were terribly drawn and some of the dialogue was so fucking stupid it's hard to believe that Matt Fraction wrote it. This is a guy who is so good at making witty, playful, off-beat dialogue and here he's completely regressed. I almost refuse to believe he wrote this book because he and Portacio are better than this. If not they would be wise/sober to step up their game in the next issue because this is just too pathetic for a mainline X-men book. I expect this shit from Ultimate Marvel, not Uncanny.

The book isn't without it's moments. The new mutant looks pretty neat and her story has some potential and the promise of more such mutants still makes the next issue worth picking up. But this issue was a thorough disappointment and for that I can only give it a 2 out of 5. I hope this is just a small bump in the road because there is a lot of ground to cover with the X-men comics. Second Coming is over. A new host of missions lies before them. These books need to be top quality if the story is going to bear the burden of this new round of X-men stories. This certainly doesn't measure up. It's a good thing it's still early in the game because too many books like this and not even the Phoenix Force will be able to fix it.