Obviously, no questions arise as to why Uncanny X-Men exists.  It may not be the flagship any more (that's Astonishing X-Men, which thrashes all the other X-books in terms of sales), but it's the original core title.

Issue #451 is the second half of a two-part story designed to bring X-23 into the book.  Claremont has a difficult remit here - X-23 is tied up in a storyline in NYX which obviously won't be resolved for months to come, and has to be skirted around.  Moreover, X-23 is getting a whole six-issue miniseries to set out her origin, so he can't really do much more than hint at that.  He's left to wheel X-23 out, say "Hey, isn't she like Wolverine?" and use the story as a trailer for upcoming X-23 arcs.

On that level, I suppose it works well enough.  I can't say I'm particularly keen to see more of the character, who comes across as Wolverine's answer to Thor Girl.  Distaff copies of existing male heroes are rarely a good idea, and without having seen any of the animation episodes that the character was taken from, I can't honestly say I've seen anything about her that really captures my imagination.  She's a female Wolverine.  That does not immediately strike me as a great idea.

Still, that's not Claremont's problem, and he sells the concept well enough here.  It helps that he's got Alan Davis on side, and Davis can make anything look great.  Davis could illustrate the telephone directory and it would be worth a look.

There's also a lame-duck story going on about the Bacchae and some big lug called Geech.  The less said about this the better.  The Bacchae have cropped up before in Claremont's Fantastic Four.  They didn't  work then and they don't work now.  As near as any coherent point can be discerned, they appear to be some kind of street-level criminal gang comprised entirely of women in silver armour.  The visual is completely at odds with the concept, and the concept is derivative schlock.  As for Geech, he's a big strongman who is supposed to impress us because of the magic words "He's proving more formidable than the Juggernaut!"  The visuals just about carry it, but he seems tagged onto the story.  Claremont has really got to find a way to make his characters interesting without overpowering them to the stratosphere, because he's become embarrassingly overreliant on it in recent years.

Anyhow, the issue has a job to do, and it more or less does it.  I'm still not all that interested in X-23, but I attribute that more to the anodyne concept than the way it's dealt with here.

Rating: B

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