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EVERYBODY KNOWS that a comic book has a ’special’ issue if it hits its 50th or 100th issue. In this case, Uncanny X-Men 500 gets its special “500th issue.” We get four different variant covers, two different writers in collaboration together (Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction) and two different artists (Greg Land and Terry Dodson) drawing their parts every few pages of the book.

But the outcome?



Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction heavily drop a “Silver Age” type feel into the 500th issue. Their knock-off Silvery-Aged dialogue is so forced and obvious that it makes me, as a reader, cringe reading the dialogue bubbles word-by-word.

The X-Men arrive at a party who are dressed up as the X-Men as old, new, dead, and alive members, etc. The party believes they are paying homage to the X-Men’s move to San Francisco, however, the X-Men have a problem with this as their are two large Sentinels sitting in the backdrop of the party. -_-

I’ll make this quick - Magneto arrives at the party to attack the X-Men in front of the helpless party who, thankfully, scramble away from the attack. Not only does Magneto attack the X-Men, he turns on the two Sentinels to attack the X-Men as well. The dialogue between the X-Men and Magneto is absolutely horrifying.

Storm: Tyrant, your villainy will be held here.

Magneto: Parlor tricks. Predictable. Banal. I’ve been slapping you around since you were prepubescent, Scott. Did you actually think I’d allow you to interfere with my plans?

(The problem with Magneto saying “predictable, banal” is that Emma said the same exact words about several pages ago.)

Scott *pointing his finger at Magneto*: …And now it’s a priceless piece of evidence we’ll spend the next hundred years reverse engineering. You find a way to fake out losing your powers? We’ll find a way to stop you from ever doing it again.

….Yes. You heard that right! Magneto “faked” his powers by using some type of machine/suit to replicate his powers he lost from M-Day. The problem with faking his powers is that it is later revealed his entire mission is to repower all the mutants who lost their power due to M-Day. (And not to mention that Magneto “mutant hunting Sentinels” to attack the X-Men. Why on earth would he ever do that? He wouldn’t…because, I can’t for the life of me buy that is actually Magneto.)

Wait a minute…wasn’t there some ripoff called Endangered Species, where Beast was willing to go the extra unethical mile to try a find a way to reverse M-Day? ….So, technically speaking here, the X-Men would be more than willing to work with Magneto into fixing M-Day.

But that’s not all! At the end of the issue, it is revealed there is a new villain club cult in town called the HELLFIRE CULT. OHHH, I’M SCARED. No, really, it sounds like some type of Hellfire CLUB knock off.

Greg Land’s art continues to make me laugh. Scott’s wavy long, “designer” hair is just gross to look at. Everyone’s faces? Still look the same. In fact, there is one panel where Emma looks like Nicolette Sheridan and another panel where she looks like Ali Larter.

On a side note, I’m not enjoying Emma’s dialogue by Brubaker. For my tastes, he writes her way too light with not enough snark. And yes, I realize Emma doesn’t need to be snarking every other sentence.

Still, it wasn’t truly, terribly, horribly, disgusting, that bad of an issue as I make out of it. Emma, as well as the other X-Men, is drawn beautifully by Terry Dodson. I actually have a cute little girl crush on her when she is drawn by Dodson. She also had some cool pages of tactical scenes during their little battle with the terrifying Sentinels.

I also semi-enjoyed the relief of the X-Men’s rather violent nature it has been getting to lately. It seems as though Marvel wants San Francisco X-Men to be “light and fluffy” rather than the “dark and gritty,” which Messiah CompleX came about it.

Either way, the issue still didn’t satisfy for the Uncanny X-Men’s 500th issue. Horrible characterization (the worst was Magneto). Horrible plot. Horrible art by Land. But awesome art by Dodson. Cool tactical scenes with Emma and co. 2/5

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