THE CREATORS: Written by Chuck Austen - your guarantee of quality!  Semi-regular artists include Kia Asamiya (#417-420), Ron Garney (#421-424 and #435-436) and Philip Tan (#425-426 and #429-433)

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Three - but then, it does have three regular artists as well...

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2003: Deep breath, all be over soon.  "Dominant Species" (the one with the wolves); "Rules of Engagement"  (Alpha Flight attack the school); "Holy War" (come on, you can't have forgotten it); "Sacred Vows" (the non-marriage of Havok and Polaris); Skin's funeral (where nobody can remember his name); "The Draco" (oh god, the Draco); and "The Trial of the Juggernaut."

Chuck Austen is nothing if not prolific.  As a result, in a year where he often seemed to be writing half the Marvel Universe singlehandedly, he still found time for a ludicrous twenty issues of Uncanny X-Men.

Thanks a bunch, Chuck.

This has been a truly dreadful year for Uncanny X-Men.  Austen's dwindling defenders sometimes suggest that his critics have a kneejerk reaction against him.  In that vein, it's worth remembering that his initial issues were fairly warmly received.  They weren't desperately imaginative, but they were competent enough.  Over the course of this year, Austen has managed to alienate more and more readers who had previously found his stories acceptable.  And that's hardly surprising, because this year he's written some jawdroppingly horrible comics.

There are two kinds of bad comic.  First, there's the comics which had a passable idea, but blew it at the stage of execution.  They may be dreadful, but at least you can understand why they were commissioned.  Second, there are comics where the premise is to immediately and obviously awful that you can't imagine how they ever got approved in the first place.  Much of Austen's work on Uncanny this year has been of that sort.

"Dominant Species": a bunch of mutants with wolf powers all join together because that's what people with similar genetics do.  (No, they don't, Chuck.)  None of them have a personality or an agenda, but they fill up several issues anyway.  This was very boring, but not a patch on what was to follow.

"Holy War": The Church of Humanity is retconned into a heretical sect led by a victim of Catholic rape, who plans to instal Nightcrawler as the Pope and then cause a crisis of Catholic faith using evil disintegrator communion wafers.  This will make people believe that the Rapture has occurred, and turn their backs on Catholicism.  Point one, as many Catholics e-mailed me to point out, the Rapture isn't even part of Catholic theology.  Point two, any plot involving evil disintegrator communion wafers is too stupid to live.

"The Draco": Ineptly plotted garbage in which Nightcrawler learns that his father Azazel is the inspiration for Satan, and Azazel attempts to escape his prison through a really elaborate plan involving fathering children around the world.  (Rather than, say, going through the portal to Earth and staying there.)

Try to imagine, if you can, a conversation between Chuck Austen and his editor which starts with him pitching any one of those three stories and ends with them being commissioned.  "Evil disintegrator communion wafers, you say?  Fantastic!"  Imagine, further, a conversation where Marvel are so impressed by the evil disintegrator communion wafers that they decide to give it a 25c promotional price tag and a huge push to tie in with the X-Men 2 movie.

Imagine a terrifying window into a dark world of anti-talent.

In fairness, it's not that Austen is incapable of writing decent stories.  When he keeps it simple, he can.  His Juggernaut subplot has been more or less acceptable.  However, he really needs to steer clear of anything remotely complicated.  Or anything involving religion.  Or difficult ideas.  Or plotting above the most elementary level.  Or women.  Especially women.  He can't write them to save his life.

Austen is, thank christ, being removed from Uncanny in the new year, to make way for Chris Claremont and Alan Davis.  Claremont was dreadful the last time he was on this book, but he's been improving of late, and I'd still take him over Austen.  Alarmingly, rumour has it that Austen will be getting an ongoing Nightcrawler series.  The mind boggles.  The idea that anyone can possibly look at Austen's work from this year - on this title, on Exiles, on Captain America, on the lamentable Call - and find him worthy of employment as a writer genuinely astonishes me.

Oh yes - Philip Tan was also crap.  Awkward figures, poor storytelling, key elements of the story being kept off panel, ridiculous scrawl where an invading army ought to be.  I can see what he's trying to do, in combining the figure design of manga with the fiddly detail of western comics, but it generally hasn't worked.  And even if it did, "The Draco" in particular showed that he is nowhere near ready for a flagship title.

This has got to be the worst year any X-Men title has had, in the forty year history of the franchise.  If you cast the net wider to the X-books as a whole, I would concede that technically, the final year of Mutant X was probably worse.  But it wasn't so bloody aggravating.  Mutant X was just stupid; Uncanny X-Men seemed almost obnoxiously incompetent, an impression which Austen's regrettably arrogant interviews only served to bolster.

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