X-Men #500 Posted 28 Aug 2008 Writer: Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction Artist: Greg Land Artist: Terry Dodson Publisher: Marvel  2.50 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by Matthew Wead Jones

 

I made my trip down to the comic shop on the wrong week this month so I ended up late for issue #500 of Uncanny X-Men. I was excited to see what it was that Mr. Brubaker might have in store since it was obvious that for the last couple issues the lack of storytelling was just a stall for the big bucks that come with a 500th issue. There’s nothing really wrong with wanting to be able to start new on a turning point issue, but at the expense to the regular buyer being three bucks a pop, it’s my personal belief that each story should be worth that much.

On opening the book, I was unimpressed.

I’m not sure what it was that grabbed me as such first. The writing, I knew going into it, was to be few and far between, but it’s the art that kind of took be back. Although Greg Land draws a gorgeous portrait of Emma Frost (who I swear changed between Heather Locklear and Carmen Electra throughout the story) his use of thin, parallel, side-to-side panels was unexciting at best.

“For a 500th issue, more should have happened.”

From the beginning of the story I saw the problems: an entire two page spread where the X-Men are the main focus, yet a construction worker in the foreground with absolutely no importance or implement of storytelling occupies an entire right side of the page. Then to top it off, Beast comes out of nowhere! You mean to tell me that in that entire giant panel, there was nowhere Beast could have been standing, waiting to jump into the conversation? Here's an idea: have him talking to the construction worker!! Maybe if that had happened I would be more forgiving about Angel's funky shoulders and the undynamic scene of Emma, Beast, and Angel staggered side by side yelling with inappropriate ferocity that is fundamentally “Wolverine,” and no visual build up of intensity. That's a whole chapter of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

But what frustrated me the most about the art, more than all the large blue spaces that seemed to surround Magneto's tiny head in just about every panel he was featured, and the way one panel carried one piece of story (and not the simultaneous action that makes a comic good), was in the simple scene where Angel says that he loves the view from the HQ. We don't get to see the view, instead we see the window that the view is seen from. Is it a poetic metaphor for the theme of intolerance and discrimination or the laziness of an artist who is far too good to make a mistake like that? I haven't a clue. Now let's move on to the writing before we move on to the praise.

I keep reading Uncanny even though every time I do I curse it. Ed Brubaker is very good at what he does when he tells Captain America or Daredevil stories, but this X-Men stuff is not his niche. His ability to stretch ten pages of story into twenty-two, perfectly illustrates why his “Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire” was twelve issues long, and Mike Carey (who is rocking X-Men Legacy) used six issues to tell the “Supernovas” story, and still told more story. I felt in this issue I finally got a good story for a twenty-two page book, only this was a thirty-seven page book. I don't mean to bash Mr. Brubaker, I do admire his work, just not on this team book. As for Matt Fraction, I know his name, but I'm not quite so familiar with his work. I never did get the chance to read Immortal Iron Fist. It's much easier to recognize the difference in art styles than writing styles, so I don't know who to complain about when it comes to what I think are the two greatest mistakes ever made in X-Men characterization.

First! Whoever authorized Cyclops to say, “suck it” as a comeback to Magneto's insult deserves to be sat on by Chris Claremont.

Second! Whoever had Storm, an African goddess, begin a sentence with “actually” when there was NO NEED for that word (a huge pet peeve of mine when coming from a gum chewing teenage girl, much less an African GODDESS!) deserves to be strangled by the ghost of Dave Cockrum.

To end on a good note though: Terry Dodson. Mr. Dodson saved this issue (if not because Emma looked the same for all his scenes). The art was good, consistent, clean, and with perfect intensity and climax. Those pages were what kept me going through those thirty-seven pages. I cannot thank Marvel enough for hiring this man to this story. There were good Greg Land parts, yes. He's a professional and has a firm grasp on what he does, but Terry Dodson, to me, seemed to better understand the feel of an X-Book. The writing did have its peaks here and there with the dialogue and real life portrayal of ignorant homo sapiens, but I found that as a 500th issue, more should have happened.

—CCdC—

 

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