This issue of Uncanny focuses on Beast and his X-Club(which should be a welcome break from Cyclops and that annoying Emma Frost). This comic is written by Matt Fraction.
-This issue details the X-Club taking a trip back in time to get a blood sample from Dr. Nemesis' parents. Beast reasons that since Nemesis was one of the first modern mutants, his parents blood may have some kind of special quality that Beast and his genius' could exploit to help mutantkind out.
-While in the past, Beast and his team manages to locate Nemesis' folks, but it seems Nemesis' parents have managed to run afoul the Hellfire Club.
-One of Sebastian Shaw's predecessors, who was a member of the Club, builds an early Sentinel to defend humanity from the mutant menace or the Ubermensch that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about. Yipes, Nietzsche in a comic book?!?
-Upon learning of the presence of Beast and the X-Club, Shaw kidnaps Nemesis' father and steals a power source he was perfecting, using the power source to fuel the Sentinel. Shaw then sends the robot after Beast and company.
-The X-Club manages to destroy the Sentinel and defeat Shaw, but Nemesis' father winds up dying, and his mother is forced into bed rest due to the fact that she was pregnant with Nemesis at the time.
-The X-Club manages to obtain a blood sample from Nemesis' parents and they ask Nemesis' mother to bury the blood sample in Golden Gate Park, where they'll be able to dig it up after returning to the present. The X-Club returns to the present and head to Golden Gate Park, where they discover Nemesis' mother successfully buried the blood samples, but that the sleeping Celestrial choose that very spot to attach itself to the planet, meaning that after everything that they went through, the blood sample is still just out of reach... This issue ends with Dr. Nemesis returning to the past to help deliver himself, but being unable to prevent his mother's death during the labor, which is either really sad or really creepy if you ask me.
To be perfectly frank, reading this comic was kind of a waste of time. While the story was OK, it didn't really lead to anything. Beast's foray into the past was a failure because he still isn't any closer to figuring out a way to fix/save mutantkind. The story falls apart further when you realize that Beast could just head to the past at a different time(a time when Nemesis' parents weren't being harassed by the Hellfire Club)and get a hold of the blood samples then. In other words, why doesn't Beast just continue to head back in time until he finally manages to get his hands on these blood samples? Exactly what is stopping him? The story itself just kind of bugged me. For a score, I'll give this issue a 6 out of 10. If you turn your brain off, you could probably enjoy this comic, but once you really start to think about things, the story just falls flat.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Did Angel appear in this issue? I thought he went on that mission with Beast. Angel is my favorite Marvel character, by the way.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Why does it seem that we're always awake and blogging at such odd hours?
Yep, Angel was indeed in this comic, but he wasn't really a major part of things. He was just another cog in the works. This comic focused heavily on Beast and Dr. Nemesis, which would have been great if only this comic went somewhere!
ReplyDeleteHuh, so you're a big Angel fan Robert? I'm a fan of him as well. Out of curiosity, what characterization of Angel do you like the most, the rich playboy, the brooding angel of death or his current version which I guess is a combination of both? I'm kind of partial to the the brooding Archangel since that's the version I remember best from my childhood.
I'm quite the night owl, which is why I usually get most of my blogging done after midnight. I usually tend to stay up late and don't wake up until well into the mid-morning hours. I figure I can keep this weird schedule up until school starts back up again in August. Then it's back to a more "regular" schedule for me.
Yeah, I've been a big Angel fan since I first starting reading comics. One of the first comics I ever received was a reprint issue of Uncanny X-Men #1, and Angel immediately became my favorite character, in part because I knew nothing about him! So to answer your question, Warren's classic characterization is probably my favorite "version" of the character. I also loved reading his adventures in Uncanny after Wolverine became a member of the team. They absolutely HATED each other at first. I don't mind the whole Archangel characterization, as I really liked when he was initially turned into Apocalypse's Angel of Death. I think Warren's recent run in X-Factor is also interesting, but I hope Marvel takes a definitive approach on the character in the near future.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yeah I'm a night owl too. It seems that I'm always up this late reading and writing about comics, lol.
Wooo yeah, didn't Warren actually leave the X-Men due to his intense hatred of Wolvie? Ah memories...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I agree completely about Marvel just picking one version of Warren and running with it. I'd personally love to see Warren get an X-team of his own to lead. I could never understand why he hasn't been given a leadership role on the X-Men. I mean he's been around forever, and he did(kind of)lead the original Champions team. Come on Marvel, give Warren a chance, there's no way he could possibly be as grating a leader as Cyclops has become!
You're 100% correct. Angel is just better than Cyclops. And in the words of Stan "The Man" Lee, "'Nuff said."
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm reading the issues of "Uncanny X-Men" and "X-Men: Legacy" that occurred between "Messiah Complex" and "Second Coming" for the first time. (I wasn't reading comics at the time, but I had picked up both cross-over events. Now that I'm back in comics, I figured that it was worth giving them a read.) I loved Brubaker's "Divided We Stand," but, man, Matt Fraction here reminds me why I hated him pre-"Hawkeye." I mean, he has some good stuff in here, but he has no attention to detail. All through the "Sisterhood" arc, stuff kept happening (Scott seeing Maddy in the club, Wolverine getting told Betsy was resurrected, etc.) only to have no one do anything about it. (If you have time, a perusal of the Comic Book Resources forum on issue #511 is hilarious, because people point out all the various inconsistencies, some that didn't dawn on me but instantly became apparently when I read them.) Reading this issue, I had the same thoughts as you. (Also, no one really seemed bothered that they were responsible for the death of Nemesis' father and the San Francisco earthquake. In fact, they seemed sort of excited about the latter.) Weird stuff. I'm hitting up "Utopia" next, so hopefully it'll be marginally better.
ReplyDelete