Back with Chuck Austen, Uncanny X-Men #423 is the 25c issue being released to tie in with the film.  I can see why they've decided to give the push to Uncanny - at the moment, New X-Men is tied up in a storyline which requires a working knowledge of a whole load of characters who aren't in the movie, so it's perhaps not the best of time for people to be jumping on over there.

Perhaps because of the well-publicised but spurious connection between the film and God Loves, Man Kills, Austen has opted for a story about religion.  Unfortunately, that means the Church of Humanity are back.  On a conceptual level the Church made a certain degree of sense as villains; in practice, they were always a dreadful flop.  However you spin it, a bunch of nutters dressed as priests and carrying ray guns look stupid.

I don't know what Austen's personal religious beliefs are, but the angle adopted here is basically negative.  He opens with a montage of great religious atrocities throughout history and intersperses the story with quotations from the less tolerant portions of the Old Testament.  There's a certain blurring of criticism of religion and criticism of Christianity, which is the only religion presented here.  Austen certainly doesn't seem wildly enthusiastic about Christianity, which was already noticeable from his rather belated referencing of Catholic scandals in earlier issues.

The issue is an interesting one but the treatment here isn't great.  The basic issue here is the same one that God Loves, Man Kills dealt with much more effectively: if your religion prescribes something as the only appropriate way to live, then how can you tolerate the transgressive behaviour of non-believers and remain consistent to a religion?  Since religions by definition appeal to the ultimate authority as legitimating their views, the circle can only be squared if the religion itself accepts tolerance of nonbelievers as part of its moral framework.  If it doesn't, then you have a problem.  As the most extreme caricature of religious intolerance, the Church don't raise these issues in a desperately interesting way.

Nor is this an ideal jumping on point, bizarrely enough.  It's not just that Austen litters the story with minor characters like Jubilee, although that's certainly a difficulty.  It's also that Austen has chosen to harness the Church story to a whopping great retcon designed to eliminate Nightcrawler's status as a priest.  I'm not generally a big fan of writers retconning one another's work, although in fairness the Church's ill-defined schemes for Nightcrawler are a dangling plot from the Joe Casey run, so something along these lines might always have been planned.  It still comes across as an unnecessarily elaborate backtracking exercise.

All a bit middling, really.

Rating: C+

back | continue