Uncanny X-Men: Grab Yourself an Ice Cold Bru....baker

Today we come to the final run of our look back at 100 issues of Uncanny X-Men issues 475-499. With the departure of Chris Claremont Marvel decided to give their resident golden boy Mr. Ed Brubaker a shot at the Merry Mutants starting with issue 475. Brubaker was an inspired choice to take on the X-Men. After all with a resume that included Criminal, Sleeper, Daredevil and Captain America where could you go wrong. Not to mention the fact that while some fanboys did not like the massive retcon taht came out of his X-Men Deadly Genesis mini-series (more on that later) you couldn't argue with the fact that it was incredibly well written.

Speaking of Deadly Genesis Brubaker's first arc logically was a sequel of sorts to that story. Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire finds Professor X, Mravel Girl, Nightcrawler, Havok and Polaris with tag along Darwin rocketing into space to go after crazy Summers brother Gabriel aka Vulcan. Now first off there was alot to like about this arc. One it was happening around the same time as Civil War and at least with Uncanny focusing on the space opera for awhile there was a narrative conceit explaining why the flagship X- title was ignoring an issue that would clearly impact the X-Men. You had gorgeous pencils by Billy Tan and Brubaker started off well by having a guilt ridden Xavier being shunned by Cyclops assembling his team of misfits and given his shot at redemption by tracking down the Rogue Vulcan. This is where it goes off the rails a bit. One too damn long. You did not need twelve issues (475-486)of this. Decompressed storytelling works great for the story Brubaker is still (40 issues and counting) in Captain America. Not so much here. Especially since a few issues omitted the X-Men entirely and concentrated solely on Vulcan. Two the bad guy won and there was no closure. Pretty much Vulcan conquers the Shi'ar, Xavier leaves 3 men behind (but gets his powers back) and then nothing.

With that we have the Extremists arc (487-491) which was much better and gratefully shorter. Brubaker manages to adress the elephant in the room that was M-Day a little, reintroduces the Morlocks and sets up the Messiah Complex crossover. Furthermore he shows great foresight by teasing Magneto's return to relevance which Mike Carey would pick up in X-Men Legacy. You also had great art by Salvador Larocca.

I won't say much about Brubaker's contributions to Messiah Complex (492-494 + the one shot)since it was part of a crossover except that it illustrates what he can do when given the A list X-Men as opposed to the bozo squads.

Finally we have the recently completed Divided we Stand (495-499). The artists once again change as now Brubaker is joined by Mike Choi and Sonja Oback. It was an obvious filler story that had some good moments. Brubaker especially writes Scott and Emma as a couple quite well. You had some good fight scenes with Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colussus in Russia and the dialogue was quite good. The whole point was to kill time before issue 500 and the big move to San Francisco but it was perfectly readable.

All in all Brubaker's 2 year solo run didn't exactly set the world on fire but he also didn't really alienate any one. Both Rise and Fall and The Extremists are out in trade and the Divided we Stand arc just wrapped. If you are a newbie I recommend bypassing Rise and Fall and starting with the Extremists its Brubaker's X-Men at its best.

Later

Kevin