Marvel's unique scheduling philosophy - chuck the books in the air, see what order they land in - pays dividends yet again, as the only X-book on sale this week is Uncanny X-Men #487.  There's four next week, and six in three weeks time, and this has now become pretty much standard.  If there's any sort of intelligent thought process going into this, it's certainly not evident from the end result.

After a year in outer space, issue #487 sees Brubaker getting back to earth and embarking on a five issue storyline about the Morlocks.  The Morlocks always seem to come back, no matter how emphatically previous writers have tried to get rid of them.  Even after Decimation, there's still a colony in the tunnels.  This time round, Masque has come upon some sort of prophecy that he believes could set mutantkind back on the right track.  Part of his scheme involves hunting down the missing Magneto.  Meanwhile, Professor X has picked up from O*N*E the news that Magneto is still at large, and wants the X-Men to track him down first.

In principle, this all sounds fine.  Brubaker seems to be joining Mike Carey in trying to address the piles of junk that are currently burying the franchise, and setting the X-Men back on track.  He's also teamed with Salvador Larroca, whose artwork is reliably beautiful.  And he writes a very good Nightcrawler.  And yet, and yet...

There are some odd choices here, and some very dodgy continuity.  We've skipped ahead several weeks from the end of the previous story, which allows the team to settle back in on earth.  Fair enough.  But it seems a little odd that only Hepzibah still seems bothered about the death of Corsair in the previous issue.  Might this not be a point of concern to, say, his son Cyclops?  Apparently not, because Cyclops isn't even in the issue, even though the dialogue suggests he's in the building somewhere. 

Darwin, who was a major character in the previous year, has simply disappeared off the face of the earth. 

Masque, the last time we saw him, was a glamorous woman (yes, woman) running an arena fighting operation in X-Treme X-Men.  Apparently we're just winding back the clock on that one.

Interestingly, the Sentinels are still there, but they're now piloted by nameless nobodies.  It seems we've now abandoned all pretence that anyone cares about Sentinel Squad O*N*E.

This sort of choppiness doesn't help the story, especially when it's trying to deal with the bigger sweep of X-Men storylines and can't claim to be self-contained.  I'm starting to get the nagging feeling that Brubaker and Carey both know that the X-Men have chronic problems, and they both know where they're trying to get to, but neither of them is entirely sure how to make the journey into a compelling story in its own right.  I certainly don't get the impression that either of them finds the X-Men's post-Decimation status quo remotely inspiring, and I can't blame them.  It certainly bores the hell out of me.

In Brubaker's case, while he's a great character writer, he's not one that you immediately associate with epics, and I'm wondering whether the X-Men really play to his strengths.  There's a massive gulf in quality between this and his work on Daredevil, let alone Criminal.

Which is not to say that it's bad, merely that it's just sort of there.  And with all the goodwill I have for Brubaker on this title, I can't honestly claim that I'm drawn in to the story for more than brief passing flashes of interest.  My head says it's going in the right direction, but I'm not feeling it.

Lovely pictures, mind you.

Rating: B

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