Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Uncanny X-Men #501
Marvel Comics
Brubaker, Fraction & Land

This issue of Uncanny is pretty tame. Not a ton happens and that which does happen isn’t terribly exciting or new. It’s not a bad issue, but it just feels like there is a lot of downtime. Generally speaking downtime isn’t a good thing, so I am hoping this series picks it up a little bit.

The issue opens with Pixie getting beaten. We’ve seen mutants targeted before and the beating is fairly vicious, but the attack is a little odd visually. For one thing, when Pixie is hit with the bat she appears to have on her “attack” face. I cant tell if she is in pain or if she is fighting. Also, the scene lacks consistent backgrounds, which makes it almost impossible to keep track of where everyone is and where the characters are getting hit and end up. It was a confusing scene, which may have been intentional, but I found a little too confusing.

Next, we have Emma and Scott hooking up (again). I am getting a little tired of all of their pillow talk, but this issue gives something very interesting. The topic of children comes up and it would seem that they are not in agreement about them. I could see this being the beginning of a rift between the two. This was a very interesting development.

Then we have some bonding between Cyclops and Angel. This kind of dragged on a little too long, but I guess the character interaction was pretty decent all things considered. This is immediately followed up with more downtime between Cyclops, Beast and Wolverine. It got boring real fast.


Uncanny X-Men #501

The issue ends with the revenge edict by Cyclops when he figures out what happened to Pixie. The Hellfire Cult has some interesting developments mixed in there before they are met with Wolverine.

The issue has some very high points. I liked many of the character’s portrayals in this issue. I liked the inclusion of certain ones that I may have forgotten to mention in this review. For the most part, I liked the developments of the Cyclops and Emma situation. I also liked how this issue tied in with the Cable solo series. The character intro bubbles were also kind of cool. These were the positives of the issue.

The negatives were the street attack on Pixie. I just felt like we’ve seen this too many times before. Also, the middle of issue just drags from Cyclops conversation to Cyclops conversation.

Another negative was the artwork. Overall, it was fine. However, I found that many of the scenes lacked a background. For example, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler interaction all appeared to take place in a prison cell or in a void. I just felt like the story could have been really enhanced by the artwork and it wasn’t.

I kind of feel like this issue is for the die-hards. For the most part, I feel like this issue doesn’t provide anything essential for a long term story that couldn’t be recapped in two sentences in the next issue. I liked it, but it certainly wasn’t close to great. If you are looking to jump on to this series or are new to it, I hope the next issues get more exciting for you.

3 out of 5 geek goggles