Broken Frontier

The X-Men are starting over – a new city, a new mission, and a new enemy. Too bad all the old hatreds came along as well.

Marvel has used the last several years’ worth of events to largely reset the X-Men franchise back to where it was in the 1960’s. Sure, many of the trappings have changes but the overall whole feels a lot the same. The question is: is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The X-Man known as Pixie and a human friend are on their way home after a night on the town when they are set upon by thugs and beaten. These thugs, however, wear masks that certain X-Men will find disturbingly familiar… Meanwhile, the rest of the team is settling into their new digs and many of them are experiencing a series of emotions they have not felt in a long time – happiness and optimism. Of course that is all about to come crashing down…

Writers Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker fill this issue with little kisses to the past – sly and not so sly references to the X-Men’s history. While it is nice to see this acknowledgement of a long and celebrated history of comic book stories, it also, unfortunately, serves to emphasize some of the derivative nature of this tale. The X-Men have always stood in for those who feel like outsiders in their own society or even in their own skin (be it teenagers, people of other races, or sexual identity) and the difficulties that they face. In turning the X-Men back into outsides, in turning them back into the persecuted minority, Fraction and Brubaker hope to also turn them back into that metaphor. The problem is that this isn’t the 1960’s anymore and comic books are a lot more complex now than they were then and a ‘one-size-fits-all’ metaphor just is not going to cut it today. The whole story is not helped by the fact that the new villain(s) – the Hellfire Cult – are a stereotypical, faceless crowd without any real sense of motivation behind them. Why are these people joining this cult? What do they really hope to gain? Who are these people? It’s easy – too easy – to just create a villainous hate group and push the right buttons to get the audience to hate them. It’s far more interesting and a lot harder to dig into the motivations behind the hate and to look at the pathways to hate… and that is what Fraction and Brubaker have failed to do here. Even the new (apparent) leader of the Hellfire Cult comes across as a stock villain with an S & M kink. Are we supposed to be shocked that Fraction and Brubaker took the original Hellfire Club characters created by Chris Claremont and took them to the next level? Nothing feels new here and certainly nothing feels innovative.

The choice of Greg Land as artist for this title is also one fraught with controversy. Land certainly has a fan following and his photorealistic art is attractive on a certain level but the accusations that he relies too heavily on photo reference have turned some away. In this issue the art is, yes, attractive. However, his hyper-realistic style simply has no sense of motion. Each panel is like looking at a still picture and as such reading the story is like looking at a slide show of images instead of seeing a story flowing from panel to panel.

While both Fraction and Brubaker are brilliant writers and masters of their craft, Uncanny X-Men so far reads like "paint-by-numbers". Rather than taking the reins and steering the horses onto a new path, they are simply taking an old trail and trying to find something new to point out along it.