Comics / Comic Reviews / Marvel Comics

Uncanny X-Men #530

By Hervé St-Louis
November 27, 2010 - 15:06

The flu strain brought to Utopia a few months ago by Wolverine and his team is infecting mutants and denying them of their powers. This is an epidemic and the island has been quarantined. Only a few mutants offshore are left to protect San Francisco, but two teams of X-Men are vying for the chance to help humanity and prevent the spread of the virus to humans. Which X-Men team is the real one.

So Greg Land is back. He’s improved a lot this issue, although there’s still an odd shots of a nice looking damsel with her hands on her hips. Habits die-hard. At least, said hips look much realistic than when I wrote an article over a year ago about how his work was turning bad and becoming a caricature. The work this issue was better than that of Whilce Portacio, so it can’t have been all that bad.

Fraction’s story is all right. The idea of giving humans mutant powers has been done several times already. The idea of a pathogen that only affects mutants has also been done. Gosh, isn’t there anything new to report here? It’s not the idea that matters so much as to how they are handled here. And of course, the treatment is better and more rigorous and more steeped in reality than past X-Men stories. This is what a lot of the work we see in comics feels like. It’s a reinterpretation of older stories but done with better storytelling and visuals. It may seems fresh, but it isn’t. The story is not bad, don’t get me wrong, but like much of his run on this series, Fraction fails to advance new concepts and stories that can add to the X-Men mythology. Instead, he sticks with safe stories groomed in the lore of the characters.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12