Uncanny #511 Review

Writer: Matt Fraction

Artist: Greg Land, Terry Dodson

This issue opens with a scene of MANGST!!! OH the pain of being a man! Wolverine and Cyclops are mad at each other. Fraction seems to think Scott would actually be shocked by Wolverine taking a clip of her hair. Not likely! Then Northstar speaks up to break the tension and we get this Craption(People seem to love Fraction's captions and are calling them Fraptions. Craption's more appropriate though.)

I would like to rewrite this to say, "Doesn't care about whiny man dramas." Unfortunately this is the most Northstar speaks the entire issue since he only gets one more word this issue. Apparently, he's just a cameo queen like Dazzler and Karma, poor dear.

I find it fucking hilarious that Maddie yells out "HURRY!" and then the next panel is the Sisterhood runway strutting. Clearly they take the idea of their asses getting kicked seriously.

Maddie casts a tracking spell to find Jean's corpse and leaves the Mastermind sisters plus Chimaera to get crushed. Then Emma and gang arrives.

Goddamn, Land, these aren't the Cuckoos! But something Fraction/Land got right was having Emma kick down the door. I seriously get so excited when I see her heel smashing a door.

Thrilling, right?

The fight begins as Possessed Psylocke yells out, "Sisterhood--STRIKE!!" which I imagine to sound like Fran from Austin Powers. Also, apparently Emma has been taking lessons Ororo on how to be a queen since she appears to be mimicking her here:

Thanks Land!

Continuing on, Maddie and the twits are following the magic scarab from Aladdin when they meet Domino and engage in pointless Domino spotlight time. Seriously, Fraction, Domino is in X-FORCE. We have a ton of people in limbo right now STOP USING AND OVERUSING PEOPLE ALREADY IN THE SPOTLIGHT. Seriously, Wolverine has more than enough page time, he should never be in Uncanny besides a cameo, Cyclops and Emma I'd understand if they were written right and not wasting so much page time for so little progress.

We go back to Emma and gang vs. Masterminds, Chimaera, and Psylocke to see only Psylocke and Dazzler alone with NO EXPLANATION what happened to everyone else. So this is the part of the fabled 'awesome dazzler scene'. Dazzler is portrayed to be pathetic and helpless and Psylocke goes on about how "Betsy doesn't live here anymore!" Within her speech, she comments on how her mind was remade in Spiral and the Red Queen's obscene image. Was that a break of the fourth wall to dig at Land and his pornifying?

Then Psylocke slaps Dazzler with the totality of her psionic powers and Dazzler is done playing around. So she does this:

This scene looks awesome, but...

Afterwards, Psylocke comes to her senses and is like "stop me!" and Dazzler's like "Oh schizzle!" Seriously, Daz? You didn't think to set you lasers to 'Stun' rather than 'Marvel Zombies'?

We join Psylocke in her mindscape with her possessed zombie self, very much like the Rogue/Ms. Zombie Marvel fight. Psylocke is in her skanky Jim Lee ninja outfit which surprisingly covers her ass a lot more than usual, but Land decided to make her outfit backless. Seriously, skankifying an already skanky outift? True Land.

Returning to the battle of Maddie plus male X-Men, we have a page of one-word blurps from everybody. Apparently Fraction gets that he can't write these characters correctly, so he gives up. Also, I've been finding out the flying is a power just thrown around to anyone, including Sage, thanks to CBR forums. Well, apparently we have a new flier joining the bunch:

Let me put in the real word he wants to say but won't due to his manly repression of emotion:

Psylocke has her epic battle with the other personality and predictably wins. This is her victory image:

Look through the scene and you will find a lot of tentacles in the background of her mindscape. Betsy apparently has a thing for tentacle rape? Also, is it Land's inability to draw Asian women or does Betsy see herself in her English body but wearing ninja costume? It'd make sense since she lived in her old body, y'know, for a good 20-ish years at least.

The Maddie battle ends with Maddie getting in the wrong body and self destructing. My question is who's corpse did she ruin?
Whatever, Psylocke returns herself to her Asian body since Dazzler destroyed the restored English body. THANKS DAZZ, you've ruined the hopes and dreams of British Betsy lovers everywhere. The Sisterhood departs since Maddie isn't around anymore to fix nasty fatal wounds.

Emma could not be more pissed that she's being cheated out of a free opportunity to beat the shit out of someone. Oh, torture happy Emma!

Spot the Aussie-years X-Men! We've got Storm, Dazzler, Psylocke, Wolverine, and Colossus!!
Rogue is coming to San Fran soon, Longshot is around but in X-Factor, and Havok's business in space is wrapping up soon. Reunite the Aussie team, please!

Also, I did notice that the man team went to combat the real threat while the women were left to the distraction. And Domino does not count as helping make it better. I really disapprove of the sort of BS. In other WTF news:

How'd she get her telepathy back? I'm thrilled it's back, but um, she got her Kwannon's corpse didn't have any since I believe when she died Betsy got a boost by getting her power too. And her telepathy was then swapped for Jean's TK and Jean's dead. Seriously, explanation anyone?
And also, so now Betsy has Jean's old powerset? I smell trouble.

The issue ends with in Emma and Scott's bedroom AGAIN! Beast is in there this time saying, "Blah, it's obvious a pointless fight is about to begin about overdramatized shock over her Cabal and his X-Force which Emma pretty much already knows about. I'm leaving!" I so wish he wasn't part of the the crossover, him and his Science club need to die an unremarkable death. But this cover suggests he'll be around:

Also, was it on purpose that Emma's clothes be shredded (the only ones may I add) to make underwear and thigh highs? It's either skankifying or symbol of her Hellfire Club days, I'm hoping for the latter.

Overall, this arc was crappy for these reasons: Land, duh, but also the first two issues were too slow and spent on pointless crap. The fight issue wasn't a fight issue, it was a scene of the X-Men trapped and then getting un-trapped and Emma, Wolverine, the Cuckoos, and Pixie fighting. That's it! No real fight. And this conclusion feels completely rushed, especially for an arc so fiercely promoted, and it leaves me saying, "That's it?"

Sorry for image-heavy post, I unfortunately did not have many interesting things to say on this issue since it was mediocre. Not to worry, another Uncanny is out soon and the crossover is starting soon with the Utopia one-shot that has Silvestri as art!! Unfortunately, this marks the beginning of a Dodson arc and I'm sorry to all of you who like him but good heavens he's bland. Him and Land do have this in common though: they both have problems giving us repeated images. In Dodson's case though it's because all his characters look the same.