The title numbering of this book is a misnomer as you can see by the collected comics seen in the purple box to the right. My guess would be that Marvel thought this would sell more books, giving new readers the perception that they can jump into the Uncanny X-Men and be able to get into it without needing to know much of the X-Men backstory.

In reading through this book I didn’t really get the feeling that they made any extra effort in this book to help a new reader get caught up with the characters and their storylines. I was expecting more exposition and maybe even a couple pages of backstory at the beginning of the book, but there was none of this. Strange that they’d choose to make this a number 1 trade paperback.

Now for a bit of my X-Men backstory so that you can better understand my opinion. X-Men #1 in 1991 was my introduction to the X-Men line of books and from that I became a fan. I continued reading that series for quite a few years and at that time considered myself to be an X-Men fanboy. Chris Claremont wrote X-Men #1, he was partly responsible for my love of the series, so I’m bound to love this graphic novel, right? Not so much…

Let’s get to the spoilers before my actual review.

Spoiler

The Uncanny X-Men have become the XSE, a global mutant police force. In the first story Marvel Girl, Bishop, Storm & Cannonball successfully difuse a gang of high-tech terrorists from violently taking over an oasis in the Sahara desert while Wolverine and Nightcrawler fail to save a downtrodden teenage mutant with the power to detonate from himself.

Then the real story and threat begins. Some kind of insanely powerful sentient robot/nan-tech being that attacks Cannonball, Bishop & Marvel Girl at the estate of Brian Baddock (Captain Britain). The creature is then able to remotely infect Sage at Xavier’s Institute and through her attack Wolverine, Nightcrawler & Storm while the rest of the faculty and students are knocked out by the Institute’s own self-defense systems.

With the help of Storm, Sage eventually frees herself from the robot thingy which from now on I will call the Fury. The team reunites and determines that the Fury is nearly invincible, their only hope is to work together. Sage channels the team’s power into Marvel Girl who uses it to create a black hole that envelopes the Fury and sends it into a parallel universe. The Fury turns out to be Jamie Braddock, the twisted brother of Captain Britain.

After that whole disaster the X-Men get a reprieve, a meeting with the Queen of England. It’s just a setup though and Viper captures the team (minus Wolverine who was otherwise engaged) and takes them to Murderworld and removes their powers with some nanites (again with the nanites, this is becoming a cliche).

Viper tracks down Sage in Murderworld and shoots her through the head at close range. You’ve gotta love Viper. Viper takes off when the army shows up and dead Sage is revealed to be an image-induced Wolverine whose healing factor nullified the effects of the nanites, so he was no worse for the wear getting shot in the head.

The only thing left is to save the Queen, which turns out to be just one of the royal house maids from one of Murderworld’s traps. The X-Men save her in some overly complicated way that I’m not going to even try to explain while Sage spies on Courtney Ross, Viper and Sebastions Shaw as they form a truce to increase the strength of the Hellfire Club.

Well, if you read the spoiler there’s a lot going on in this trade paperback. In fact, I think that’s one of my greatest complaints. Everything in this and the subsequent book feels rushed from plot to combat. It feels like Claremont tried to put 15 pounds of cr4p into a 5 pound bag. I don’t know if this was an editorial decision or if he just wanted to squeeze in as many ideas he had for the X-Men before he moved onto a different project.

This is the main erason that I have to regretfully say that I didn’t really enjoy reading this X-Men book, which is why I’ve been putting off the review for so long.

Story
Artwork
Value
Can It Stand Alone
Cool Factor
Average