As a general rule, these days I only review storylines when they're finished.  But I'll make an exception for Uncanny X-Men #481 for two reasons.  First, it's a year-long storyline and still has five months to go.  Second, there are only two X-books out this week, and it's either this or the middle chapter of a fill-in storyline in New Excalibur.  And this is the X-Axis, after all.

It's the first week of a new month, so before turning to the story, a brief word about the adverts, which are still operating in psychotically high quantities.  Clearly somebody should be shot.  If, however, you're one of the tiny minority who insist that tons of adverts are a good thing because they somehow signal great things for the industry, then run, don't walk, to your comic store and show your support by picking up White Tiger #2, which at one point features five consecutive pages of adverts, followed by one page of story, followed by another advert.  Now that's entertainment.

But let us put the money-grabbing scum out of mind for the moment and turn our attention to the story.

Even in this day and age, where six issues was on the verge of becoming the norm for a while, a twelve issue storyline is a terribly ambitious endeavour.  Lengthy stories tend to be paced for the trade paperback, and tend to be extremely slow in serial format.  To his credit, Ed Brubaker has generally done very well with the pacing.  In old-school style, he's managed to structure the storyline so that every issue works as a self-contained story in its own right.  That's how to pull it off.

Or at least, that's what he's been doing until now.  But we're now seven chapters in, and we seem to have reached the point where the requirements of the storyline take precedence.  This is a slightly sluggish middle-act story where, for the most part, people stand around and talk about the story so far, in preparation for the final act.  Sometimes these breathers are necessary, but this story hasn't moved at breakneck pace, and I'm not convinced that we needed it.

The main agenda of this issue seems to be the relationship between Rachel and Korvus, the rebel Shi'ar assassin with the ridiculously enormous weapon.  Despite Brubaker's best efforts to persuade me that the Blade of the Phoenix is a terribly important thing which gives rise to touching dramatic moments, I just can't get over the fact that it looks totally absurd.  The story clearly wants me to take this guy seriously, but as long as he insists on waving a sharpened girder around, it ain't happening.

On the plus side, we also get a new costume for Rachel, which finally lays that awful bright green miniskirt to rest.  The new one is a vast improvement.  It's not much more practical, but at least it's easier on the eye.  It's also more in keeping with the visual style of the book under Billy Tan, who clearly wants to be a little more sombre in a mid-nineties sort of a way.  Which is another reason why that sword stands out as being so absurd, come to think of it.  Humberto Ramos might get away with that sort of thing because his books look exaggerated all the time; Tan is just too sedate and subdued for it to work.

Don't get wrong, this is far from being a bad issue.  There's some nice, gentle character development going on, and a couple of subplot scenes with the bad guys to ensure that the ongoing storyline doesn't completely grind to a halt.  It's a decent breather issue, except for the fact that we didn't actually need a breather issue in the first place.  And, of course, it's struggling against a very unfortunate character design when it comes to Korvus.

It'll read better in the context of the whole storyline; these mid-point issues rarely work so well on their own.  But to be honest, it's not the most entertaining issue of this storyline.

Rating: B

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