Uncanny X-Men in the "Manifest Destiny" era has succeeded more on manic energy than anything else. The sheer fun of seeing the X-Men do something other than mope around the mansion surrounded by pointless Sentinels went a long way towards making the book and engaging read. But at some point we really needed to stop enthusing about how awesome everything and start telling the story. And that's what we start to get here.
This is both good and bad. Technically, I'd say the writing's improved in terms of how the characters feel. They're acting more real, and less like fountains of quips. That's a good thing. But there are some serious holes here.
CLICK TO SHOW SPOILER The biggest one is Pixies living situtation. Isn't she supposed to be about 16? Why is she living in a warehouse in Oakland? Didn't she move out to be with the X-Men? Why is she staying away from them and trying to live her own life? Wasn't she unhappy like that back in Wales? There's some effort to tie her issues with her having been assaulted, but obviously she was living in the warehouse *before* that. This just doesn't match up with the set up that she was clearly given in X-Men: Free Comics Book Day 2008, and given that her character was the entire focus of that issue the mismatch is glaring.
In other bits and pieces, I remain amused at the ongoing bondage scenes with Empath. I'm not so sure where they're going with the Red Queen though. It's too early to tell what her deal is, much less whether I'll like it. I'm willing to give it some time, but really the only thing new about the X-Men having a dominatrix as a villain is that we're actually getting to see her do some dominating. On the plus side, the writers did a good job of filling out Empath's character, which gives me some hope for the Empath/Red Queen storyline.
So some pluses and minuses for the writing. The art remains Greg Land art. I think everyone knows whether they like his current art style by now or not. I could do without it but at least there weren't too many times that I felt distracted by it this time around.
I feel a bit odd giving this book three stars overall when I gave the last issue four. In many ways this is an improvement over #501. But I probably should have been harder on #501, and that one glaring fault really bothers me. And the series still hasn't given me a good feel for who's around in San Francisco or what most of the characters think about the new direction, which is something we should really be exploring by now. So averaging out, I'll be a little harder on this one.
