According to the original schedule, this was the launch week for X-Force.  But it's already slipped by a week, so instead, there's just the one X-book to look at - Uncanny X-Men #495.

It's an odd book, this - quite satisfying in terms of the story Ed Brubaker is telling, but rather clunky when it comes to the bigger picture.  After three months of "Messiah Complex", this is the first X-book to deal with the aftermath.  A curiously tiny "Divided We Stand" logo appears on the front cover to confirm that.  And what do we actually get?

Well, the X-Men haven't actually split up after all.  Instead, with the school smashed up as an aside during "Messiah Complex", they've simply closed shop for a while, and gone their separate ways.  Although they're telling the government that they've disbanded, in order to get the Initiative off their backs, the reality is that the X-Men have gone on holiday, to figure out what to do next. 

On the one hand, this is long overdue.  The X-Men haven't had a clear purpose ever since M-Day (other than trying to reverse it, which they never attempted), and so the book has been drifting.  It's past time for the characters to sit down and figure out what to do with their lives.  But on the other hand, wasn't "Messiah Complex" supposed to have provided the X-books with their new direction?  The storyline seems to have done a fine job of setting up the new Cable series, but all it's done for Uncanny X-Men is to clear away some dodgy ideas like the Sentinels.

Really, we could have got to this point without "Messiah Complex", just by having Scott throw his arms in the air, call it a day, and leave the country.  Instead, we get some awkward attempts to tie in the X-Men's dissolution with the disappearance of Professor X (only sketchily addressed, and if you're going to do it that way, you really need a footnote telling people where the story can actually be found), and the Initiative.  Neither of these makes sense - the X-Men have had long stretches without Professor X in the past, and why is the threat of Initiative interference any worse than the O*N*E, who've been keeping the X-Men under armed guard for the last few years?  Both ideas feel as though they've been tacked on in an attempt to justify this story as, somehow, emerging from "Messiah Complex."  It doesn't.  It's simply the story that they could, and should, have done two years ago.

Unwilling to deal with the Initiative, most of the X-Men are lying low out of the country.  Scott and Emma are on holiday in the Savage Land, hanging out with Ka-Zar and wondering what to do next.  Brubaker has a good handle on their relationship, and Emma continues to be a far more interesting foil than Jean tended to be.  Kurt, Peter and Logan are sightseeing in Germany, and there's a gentle family atmosphere which feels like a throwback to earlier days.  Basically, without the lead weight of trying to be the X-Men, everyone's having a much better time.

The issue ends with a set-up for the next storyline, as Angel arrives in San Francisco and finds that everything has turned into the 1960s.  This seems like a light, fun story - and, once again, completely unrelated to "Messiah Complex."  It's a very strange editorial decision; you'd have thought they'd want to capitalise on the crossover by following up with that plot direction.  Instead, we have the book going its own way again, with some unconvincing lip service paid to the crossover.

Art comes from Mike Choi and Sonia Oback, regular collaborators who produced some beautiful work on the X-23: Target X miniseries last year.  This is not in the same league.  It's lacking the grace and delicacy that they've seen in some of their earlier work.  They don't seem at all comfortable with Scott, who seems rather at odds with their style, and a scene with Emma and Shanna makes them look decidedly similar.  I've seen a lot worse, don't get me wrong, but knowing what these two can do, I can't help feeling that this is a little bit flat.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this issue, really.  I enjoyed it on its own terms, but it feels decidedly like more playing for time before they finally get around to choosing a proper direction for the book - presumably with the imminent issue #500.  Or am I being unduly gullible by assuming that this is heading anywhere at all?  (Even round in circles?)  A story like this coming straight on the heels of "Messiah Complex" kind of makes me wonder if they really do know what they're doing here.  But if the big picture is murky, Brubaker is still doing fine.

Rating: B

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