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THE CREATORS: Joe Casey
writes issues #402-409, with Chuck Austen taking over as of
issue #410. In theory Ron Garney is the regular artist
as of issue #402, sharing arcs with Kia Asamiya as of isuse
#416. But in fact...
THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT:
Ten.
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002: The
X-Corps storyline; Nightcrawler's crisis of religious faith;
the Vanisher's drug dealing empire is destroyed; Black Tom
Cassidy and the Juggernaut in Scotland; Annie Ghazikhanian
arrives at the Mansion; Northstar joins, and boy, is he gay;
and the Juggernaut reflects on his childhood through the
medium of violence.
 Uncanny X-Men was the ugly
duckling of last year's relaunches, as Joe Casey's initial
issues just weren't working out. Casey began this year
with the rather ill-conceived X-Corps storyline, which had
sounded like a bad idea from the promotional material, and
looked no better by the time it actually saw print.
Early promotional material had shown the X-Corps in neo-Nazi
uniforms, and apparently this was the impression we were
supposed to get from the story.
The initial sketches were
released through the usual publicity channels, and were
greeted with a mixture of tutting and derision. A
rethink evidently ensued, as what eventually saw print was an
X-Corps completely lacking in any such iconography.
Unfortunately, it hadn't been replaced by anything else,
leaving the story rather empty as readers were left to imagine
for themselves quite why the X-Men were so worked up about a
splinter group who didn't seem to be doing anything all that
outrageous.
Ironically, Casey seemed to be
finding his feet just as he was leaving the book, which a two-parter
tying up the Vanisher storyline from the 2001 Annual.
It's easily the best thing he did on the book, and it's
genuinely a nice little story with the X-Men winning through
some interestingly unconventional routes.
 Casey's run had started off with
high ambitions which it largely failed to realise. Chuck
Austen, his replacement, has taken the opposite route - a very
conservative take on the book, especially by current Marvel
standards, but one which largely succeeds in what it set out
to do. Aside from the rather irritating treatment of
Northstar (who's barely in the door before we launch into a
storyline about gay tolerance - doesn't the poor bastard ever
get any other sort of plot since he came out?), it's
unspectacular but competent superheroics.
This may be the sensible way to
go, providing an alternative for those who prefer a more
traditional approach than New X-Men. Then again,
isn't that what X-Treme X-Men is supposed to be for?
One point that concerns me about Uncanny is that it
seems to lack direction - it's a miscellany of subplots about
individual characters, but with no central theme seeming to
drive it forward. It feels a little like a dumping
ground for characters who weren't being used in New X-Men.
We seem to have gone from aiming
high and missing, to aiming low and largely hitting the mark.
Decide for yourself whether that's an improvement.
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