Uncanny X-Men #500 tried too hard to be too many things- a reference to past milestones, a declaration of new intentions, an epic start to an era within a self-contained story. With all that out of the way, issue #501 feels like a much more natural start to things. One pet peeve is that we *still* don't have a clear line-up for the team- for instance is the character who appears in the last scene part of the team or just helping out? But that aside, we're at least moving forward with a theme.
That theme, announced last issue, is that San Francisco is a mutant sanctuary that the X-Men will defend. This doesn't really mesh with the slightly lower-key approach taken in Ellis's Astonishing X-Men (where the team were wearing street clothes instead of costumes while in the city), but there's yet time to sort that out. What we get here is the follow-through on the threat to Pixie from last issue's epilogue, and the X-Men's response. It's predictable enough fare, and the Hellfire Cult is deliberately recycling old material, but it gets things moving so I'm willing to wait and see where Fraction and Brubaker take this before rendering final judgement.
In between the action scenes, though, is where the real surprises come. The creative team is definitely not shying away from San Francisco's kinky sexual side.
CLICK TO SHOW SPOILER Scott and Emma's bedroom scene is quite direct, if anything enhanced by the fact that we never actually *see* what Emma's modeling for him (and given what Emma wears in public, one can only imagine the possibilites). Her comment that the X-Men seem more "sex-saturated" since moving to San Francisco suggests this is not a one-off thing.
Even more surprising is the S&M scene between Empath and the Red Queen. Bondage/fetish outfits are old hat for the X-Men (see Emma Frost's entire wardrobe), but people actually strapping themselves to walls to be whipped by a woman in a latex hood who makes them call her "mistress"? That's a little more serious kink than waitresses in corsets. I'm not entirely sure that all this is what the X-Men really need, but as a San Francisco resident it all feels fine to me. We do actually have a bondage street fair every year, after all.
On the art side, well, It's still Greg Land but when he's not alternating pages with Terry Dodson his art's a lot less jarring. The scenes in the Hellfire Cult headquarters actually came over quite well. But Logan should really never look airbrushed.
All in all, despite a number of things that shouldn't quite work (predictable plot points, sex amped to 11, dialog that's a touch too giddy) this somehow comes together to make me want to see more. I'm not sure it's going to be a great story yet, but this does have me looking forward to issue #502. Maybe it's just because the X-Men feel like they have some energy again, and it's been way too long since that was true.
