Uncanny X-Men, in contrast, is in the relatively fortunate position of being a House of M crossover book, which means that it gets to use the story as a plot device while ploughing on with a story of its own.  (Incidentally, it'll be interesting to see how the sales on crossover titles hold up once readers twig that there's no actual story connection - they're just stories set in the same universe.)

But to complicate matters further, Uncanny X-Men isn't really doing an Uncanny X-Men story.  Instead, the additional remit here is to set up New Excalibur.  However, that fits in relatively nicely.  The main point of this issue is to bring Captain Britain back into circulation.  Last we heard of him, in the Excalibur miniseries from a few years ago, he was running Otherworld and was therefore responsible for worrying about great big cosmic disruptions in the universe.  House of M qualifies nicely, allowing Claremont to do a story about the cosmic shockwaves while largely sidestepping the crossover itself.  (Other than Psylocke and Marvel Girl, who somehow survive the warp by being shunted into a limbo dimension, the rest of the X-Men are wiped out on page 1 and never come back.)

Of course, Claremont and Davis did this sort of thing before in their first run on Excalibur, which was full of multiple Captain Britains, distorted versions of familiar characters, and general over-the-topness.  This is more or less what we get here, in something of a Greatest Hits format.  Readers with particularly long memories can have fun spotting alternate-reality superheroes from Davis' own Excalibur stories making brief cameos here.  Meanwhile, the plot hauls in Sir James Jaspers and Jamie Braddock to give us a complete set of Captain Britain villains who specialise in reality warps.  Captain UK turns up for another obligatory cameo appearance (still with authentic, mid-eighties hairstyle).

It's pretty fun, but doesn't quite fire on all cylinders.  Partly that's because of the inherent difficulties of generating any real dramatic tension in a story where all the rules are being rewritten every second page.  Partly it's because of the nagging suspicion that the characters are going to get sidetracked into something else altogether, because surely it must be another book's job to actually resolve the warp storyline.  (Then again, you never know.)  And partly there's the sense that it was all a lot more spontaneous and freewheeling, and just generally worked better, when we saw it in Excalibur fifteen years ago.

But the art is great, and really, this is the sort of thing you want to see from Claremont and Davis working together.  It's a throwback to early Excalibur - albeit without the comedy, which would have been rather out of place in this story.  And that's no bad thing, really.

Rating: B+

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