Uncanny X-Men #500Publisher: Marvel
Writers: Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction
Pencils: Greg Land & Terry Dodson
Inks: Jay Leisten & Rachael Dodson
Colors: Justin Ponsor
What a bitter disappointment. I loved Brubaker and Fraction on Iron Fist and had thought Brubaker’s work on the X-Men to be pedestrian but still readable. This was really weak.
The X-Men are now based in San Francisco and have built this incredible building to house their operations on the outskirts of the city. San Francisco is a sanctuary city for all mutants. Isn’t that nice, the same sentiment that San Francisco shows in real life for illegal immigrants is shown for mutants in Marvel comics. I hope Ed and Matt know that recently due to San Fran’s wonderful upbeat and loving policy that a young man was never deported back to El Salvador and he recently killed a father and his two sons for basically nothing. But let’s keep everyone here and shield them from the evil government wanting to send back the wonderful hard working and family loving illegal immigrants. In order words, push ideas and agenda, but don’t preach to me and tell me how to think.
Next an artist comes to town and displays Sentinels and Magneto comes in and activates them and the fight ensures. Various X-Men show up with no rhyme and seemly leave for no reason. Magneto is wearing a suit to fake his powers and working with High Evolutionary for some unknown reasons, Angel defeats a Sentinel on his own – how?? – Who cares? I’m not even sure what the hell the point of the story was.
At the end Emma allows Scott to broadcast out to the world to come to San Francisco where everyone who is a mutant will be welcome and given sanctuary. I started to tear up, it was so moving.
Let’s talk about the art. We had the great tracings of Greg Land and the wonderful artwork of Terry Dodson. Now Greg Land’s work is just plain annoying. First off you are always trying to see what model or star he decided to trace for a character, then he has the worst facial expressions in all of comics. Either the same big a** grin on every character (Note to Greg: different people have different smiles) or they have that mouth opening scream thing. One panel have Angel, Beast and Emma all with the mouth open scream expression. Terry Dodson’s work is great and there is this French graphic novel he drew that needs to be translated into English that is off the charts sexy. As an action/super hero artist, I don’t know. I know it pays the bills better and I can live with his work.
So the super realistic tracing of Greg Land and the fluid and stylistic sexy drawing of Terry Dodson and you just give one half of the book to each, right. No, no, no, you intermingle the pages like you threw the script up in the air and just sent whatever pages to each one. It really did not work and both artists suffered for the jarring back and forth in styles that we had to suffer through.
At least you have at least six different covers you could chase after as another reward for Marvel to its fans.
Overall Grade F – I cancelled the book. I was thinking of hanging on, but I rather stop supporting this title. I will continue with Astonishing and Legacy, but this was brutal. It was like they were telling me to drop it. I listened for once.
Tag line: I had to wait 500 issues to get this?
You know the illegal guy killing someone is a red herring, right? I mean, it's like the car accidents with illegals. The fact that they're illegal is irrelevant to what happened in the car wreck or the killing of someone. Sure, they wouldn't have been here if they were deported first, but were they even picked up any time before?
ReplyDeleteBesides, the reason to oppose illegals isn't crime or car accidents. Illegals are much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators (aside from the illegal immigration itself, of course), simply because those who prey on them know they're unlikely to go to the police. They also don't make as many insurance claims in accidents for fear of deportation, no matter how injured they may actually be.
Anyway, the reason to oppose illegals is the impact on the economy and jobs of those already here. Personally, I find it amusing that the same people who are complaining about American jobs being sent overseas are the same ones complaining about illegals coming here for jobs. Obviously, if people are coming here in large numbers to get jobs, then there must be a lot of jobs here still.
Sorry. Forgot to put in my name on that.
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