The X-Men are uncanny again!

The new Uncanny X-Men #1 was released this week…and it was awesome!  There are so many X-Men books (and they keep announcing more) that it can be hard for fans of Homo Superior to know where to begin.

What makes this book so good?  One of the best things about X-men books can also be their Achilles heel.  X-men books tend to revolve around developing characters and not so much plot.   Because of this the need for a purpose  gets lost  in the process and thrown out for the sake of introducing new mutants or flushing out what makes them tick. Bendis is a great writer because he knows a book with a well-defined purpose will give its characters depth and make their development richer as they react to and within the story.   It’s a story, not just a filler arch.  It aims at an answering a question and providing a resolution to problem.  And this creates drama, and thus, comics that are amazing to read.

The problem uncanny X-Men 1 seeks to solve is that New Mutants are popping up all over the world and Scott and his group are recruiting them.  This is a problem because we don’t know if we should trust Scott or his ability to mold mutant minds for good.   Ever since the though whole Avengers vs  Xmen stuff we as readers have had serious reason to question Scott’s moral compass. 

In this first issue, Bendis gives us some tasty drama by setting up some disagreements that Magneto has with Scott over the future and philosophy of mutant kind.  This will almost certainly be the driving conflict in the issues to come.  Which is great! Cause Magneto isn’t really Magneto unless he’s a villain, or at least sorta one.   All this, with a dash of most of their powers being out of wack, the age ole X-Men plot device.

I’m really excited about both Bendis X-books, All New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men.   With ANX he’s giving us a kind of retrospective on X-Men history through the eyes of the original X-Men (who have been taken from the past by Beast so as to remind Scott of where they came from and what they were about in the beginning…I know right).   And with Uncanny we have a new spin on the classic question of the X gene: “I am a mutant? So what does that mean?”

If you love X-Men or have been waiting for a good starting point to jump back in this is the issue to grab.