Two of the ongoing X-Men titles are shipping this week - I've wondered for a while how on earth Marvel are working out their schedule, which seems to dump a ton of X-books into a single week every month, and can't seem to grasp the obvious desirability of having Uncanny, Astonishing, X-Men and Ultimate X-Men each shipping on a different week of the month.  No doubt there must be some logic to the schedule, but it's far from apparent what it might be.

Anyhow.  Uncanny X-Men #452 is this week's other X-Men title, kicking off the three-part "Chasing Hellfire."  I'm pleased to see that Uncanny is working in shorter story arcs than have become commonplace in recent arcs; Claremont never seemed entirely comfortable dragging out his storylines to six months, and frankly, he's not the only one.  Self-contained trade paperbacks are all well and good, but there's no good reason why they can't contain two three-issue arcs rather than one six-issue arc.  In that most writers seem incapable of filling six issues without resorting to desperate and obvious filler, the latter strikes me as preferable.

The plot: the X-Men are looking for Sage, who's disappeared in the ruined Hellfire Club.  (And I'll come back to that in a minute.)  Emma Frost, naturally enough, turns up as a guest star, since she actually knows the building.  Emma and Rachel get separated from the others, squabble for a bit, make up, and join forces as an odd couple to investigate.  Meanwhile, the others go off to Paris and have a seemingly unrelated plot.

It's alright.  Andy Park's pencils turn out to be a lot more attractive than his muted and murky painted covers.  It's more similar to Olivier Coipel's work than regular artist Alan Davis, but the style works for me.  Rachel and Emma's telepathic brawl is a nice sequence, and he's got a good sense of set design as well.  Emma and Courtney Ross are going to be a bit hard to tell apart, but to be fair, that's inherent in the existing character designs, and since they're both meant to be wearing white ballgowns for plot reasons, there are limited possibilities for making them distinctive.  (Park has opted for different hairstyles, which is the best option available to him.)

On the other hand... the issue is riddled with non-fatal but annoying continuity errors and plot glitches.  The Hellfire Club was active as a gentlemen's club in both New X-Men and Weapon X very recently, so depicting it as a long-abandoned ruin is just wrong.  Closed, yes; delapidated, no.  Whatever the dialogue says, Emma never quit the Hellfire Club - she was put into a coma in 1991, and by the time she woke up several years later, Shinobi Shaw had seized control of the Club.  Rachel is meant to be disguising the X-Men telepathically in the opening pages, but Wolverine's still in costume and Kurt's still a blue guy with a tail, so putting him in civilian clothes is hardly going to make much difference.  And why does Claremont persist in inventing new and arbitrary powers for characters who were perfectly effective as they stood - Bishop "instinctively knows" where he is at all times? 

Minor problems, but enough to grate.  Perhaps more to the point, though, I get the overwhelming impression that Chris has nothing more to say about these characters.  After so many years writing them, that's hardly surprising - how many X-Men stories can one man have?  Even so, there's an obvious recycling of pet themes going on here.  Another story about a slave market?  Oh god.  For heaven's sake, Chris, do a miniseries for Avatar and get it out of your system.

Still... it's alright.  But we're going round in circles here, aren't we?

Rating: B

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