Broken Frontier

Jamie Braddock gets the attention of a Watcher, the mystery of Psylocke is solved...kind of, and the polar opposite of Phoenix makes his first appearance.

Claremont’s run on Uncanny X-Men is coming to an end, and with it, many of his dangling plot threads. The most significant of these is probably the death and reappearance of Elizabeth Braddock, Psylocke. In the "Family Lies!" storyline, exactly what happened to her is finally revealed. Psylocke, along with the other X-Men on her team, uses this knowledge to battle some new enemies and a creature called the First Fallen, best described by the Watcher:

Due to an illness, Claremont has handed the dialoguing to Tony Bedard who runs well with the story. It is clear he knows these characters and how they might react in any given situation. Psylocke, who has the body of an Asian assassin, also has the mind of a pampered Brit. Bedard expresses this fact by having her use British slang when she speaks, something many writers forget to do. Bishop and Nightcrawler’s personalities clash, as they should. The White Queen’s pompous, irritated attitude at the O*N*E presence is cold and direct when Reyes asks about the Watcher:

Though it is a good quote, this line symbolizes the end of an interesting tale. Marvel Girl and the Phoenix Force did not take center stage last issue making Claremont’s story feel like something different for awhile. Then it is revealed in 473 that a powerful entity who is the exact opposite of the Phoenix is behind all the happenings of late and we realize the writer is back to his old tricks. Lately, it seems his X-Men are always up in arms against the Phoenix or having something to do with the Phoenix, and frankly, that’s old hash. Can’t we have something new, something different?

With Cruz doing the penciling, that isn’t exactly what we get. However, in this case, it is not necessarily a bad thing. I have heard fans describe him as the industry’s ultimate chameleon since he has emulated many other artists. The one style that has seemed to stick the longest is Joe Madureira’s. In this issue Cruz throws in a little bit of Chris Bachalo’s almost cartoonish work and comes out with a group of X-Men that I want to hate to look at. But I can’t. As an artist, if you are going to copy somebody, it might as well be somebody good, and if you are looking for a style that is far from realistic, but fun to watch, it doesn’t get much better than Mad or Bachalo, Cruz’s magic formula.

Though this is the end of Claremont’s second era with the X-Men, he is not going out with quite the same bang as last time. His stories ring of things already told, and his battles and issues with the Phoenix seem endless. Thankfully, they are reaching their conclusion, and at least they are looking nice as they do so.