Uncanny X-Men #531 Review

Writers: Matt Fraction & Kieron Gillen
Artist: Greg Land
Cover By: Greg Land & Justin Ponsor

Quarantine Part 2

Team books. I’ve already spoken of my disdain for them (though very exaggerated). One of the major problems with such series’ is the confusion and choppy cutting from one part of the story to another. The writing team of Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen is able to avoid such pitfalls in this well-written chapter to the current X-Men story Quarantine. For those of you not familiar, a mutant flu pandemic has broken out on Utopia; trapping some of the most powerful X-Men on the island while it goes under quarantine. Not only this, many (including the one we call Wolverine) are at the mercy of this power-suppressing virus. Logan’s healing factor is weak, and it’s causing all kinds of problems mentally and physically, but we’ll get to that later.

This one opens with Namor (aka The Sub-Mariner) demanding that he be released. He tries to fight the affects of the virus, but these attempts prove to be futile. By giving in, we see how powerful this “flu” really is. A quick page-turn later and we see that there are in fact many more infected mutants and Dr. Kavita Rao observes that the affects are increasing rapidly in those who have contracted the virus. It is unknown whether the virus is indeed contagious to humans, but there is emphasis that this knowledge must be known as soon as possible. This leads Dr. Rao to make an irrational decision to inject the virus into herself to see whether she will contract it or not. Who does that? That’s like John McClane shooting himself to kill some dude, only this is a no-win situation for Ms. Rao. The outcome of her “experiment” is held off for next month.

While this is going on, Logan is suffering many different symptoms to go along with the typical coughing, and wheezing and all that other nasty stuff. Blood poisoning from the adamantium in his body is causing mood swings and psychosis. Right now, he’s just a mess. What is causing him the most pain though is the feeling of helplessness, the feeling that he is letting down people who have put their trust in him. As the havoc is going on in Utopia, there is a mutant killing the people that Wolverine has sworn to protect, and he can’t do a thing. This is a recurring theme with Logan; the man who can’t be physically hurt for the most part, is vulnerable when it comes to the guilt of putting others in danger.

At the same time, Angel is in charge of a temporary X-Men team with the help of Storm. As they go about their business, the pseudo-mutants created by the Sublime Corporation are doing the best they can to imitate the X-Men. They’ve garnered the attention of the media as well as the X-Men, and both are a little unsure of who they are and whether they are a threat. The final piece to this story is with Emma Frost who is currently tasked with the disposing of Sebastian Shaw. We hear a bunch of stuff about her past, yada yada yada, then my boy Fantomex makes like an idiot and kicks Shaw into the weird portal thing, or maybe it was just a giant hole. Don’t ask me, I just read these books.

So an overall decent issue, there wasn’t really anything to complain about. On the other hand there wasn’t anything spectacular. We’re getting bits and pieces of an overall larger story that will hopefully tie together nicely. Fraction and Gillen do a good job of including humor into the book without making it feel like you’re reading Deadpool.

Classic Review: Uncanny X-Men #268

Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Jim Lee
Cover By: Jim Lee



This issue is a little confusing because it keeps jumping between the past and the present. It takes a lot of time to figure out what’s actually going on, but when you do, it turns out to be a pretty good story. Well, the story begins with Captain America fighting off The Hand in Madripoor. The year is 1941, and he has no idea who The Hand is. Wolverine jumps into the brawl to give Cap a hand, telling him he’s just there to help. The duo is able to fight off the ninjas and Logan and Cap have a short exchange of words. At this time, they do not know each other yet.

From here, the story jumps to the present-day Madripoor, where Black Widow is getting attacked by The Hand. It looks like Widow is overwhelmed until Jubilee and Psylocke help her out, along with Wolverine. From that point, they are able to take out The Hand pretty handily. Logan and Black Widow talk, and then the story jumps right back to 1941. Now you can see why this issue is so confusing.

What’s happening is that there are two stories going on simultaneously. One is a memory, being shown in all flashbacks, which consists of Logan helping Cap and protecting Natalia Romanova ( Black Widow) from both Baron Strucker and The Hand. The story taking place in the present is basically Wolverine, Jubilee and Psylocke helping Black Widow catch Soong, a criminal in Madripoor, while fighting the hand at the same time. The whole situation is a little puzzling, and the stories are a little cluttered. If you pick them apart, there is nothing complex about them at all, I just wish that they were made a little more clear.

The only other thing that bothered me was the ending. There are technically two endings, one for the mission with Cap, and one for the present day with Widow. The past story actually had a decent ending, with Wolverine crashing Cap’s execution and ruining Strucker’s plans, but the other story really lacked any closure. Basically, once Wolverine arrived with Widow, Jubilee and Psylocke, all the bad guys ran away. That really left me with nothing.

Overall, this issue was pretty fun, but it just was too much of a hassle to read. It was hard to get too into the story when I had to keep going back and looking at pages I had already read to figure out what was going on. It did include some funny interactions between the various characters in this comic, mostly Jubilee and Psylocke. When Psylocke told Jubilee, “Child, please,” I couldn’t help but think of Chad Ochocinco. Also, the art was great and the cover was even better, but what do you expect from the great Jim Lee? The story leaves you with a chuckle when Cap hints to Logan that they should be a team, and both are thinking that the other should be the sidekick. Of course, neither would ever settle for being the sidekick, so it would never work.

I’m gonna give this one a 3.5/5