Review: Uncanny X-Men #1 (Vol. 3)

It took me a while to get my hands on the new Uncanny X-Men #1 written by Brian Michael Bendis and artwork by Chris Bachalo. It contains the further adventures of Cyclops and what’s left of his inner circle following the events of Avengers vs. X-Men. I’m a little behind on this but I’ll be playing catch-up over the next few weeks. Now it’s important to note that you need to have at least a basic knowledge of what exactly happened during the AvX crossover but since I covered that series extensively last year I don’t want to go too in-depth with it here. However if you don’t want to shuffle through twelve reviews I’ll summarize as brief as I can:

The Phoenix Force came back to Earth to possess Hope Summers. Cyclops believed Hope could use it to restore mutantkind (99% of mutants lost their powers previously) but Captain America believed it might destroy the planet and their two teams clashed. Eventually Iron Man accidentally split the Phoenix into five parts which possessed Cyclops and his inner circle who used their new-found godhood to make fix all the world’s problem. Eventually the Avengers (and even the X-Men) kept picking off the group until Cyclops, now fully possessed by the Phoenix, basically went insane and killed Prossefor X. He was defeated, Hope gained the Phoenix Force and used it to restore mutantkind...just as Cyclops said would happen from the beginning. For his crimes Cyclops was imprisoned.

And I'm happy to debate with anyone who disagrees

I haven’t kept up with Marvel following the crossover and unfortunately this book does a piss poor job of explaining what happened between then and now so I had to do research. Basically Cyclops was content to stay in prison for the rest of his life and pay for the death of his mentor until a fellow mutant inmate was murdered. This convinced him to have his still at large Extinction Team break him out of prison where he then became the public face of a new mutant revolution. He decides to take his team to find and train the new mutants emerging in the world all while being on the run from SHIELD. Man, this is a lot backstory for one issue. I think we found out first Con and we haven’t even started the goddamn review yet.

One last thing before we get into it: I hate this trend of publishers restarting the numbering of classic comics. This is the second time in two years that Marvel has canceled Uncanny X-Men and re-started with a new numbering and from a historic perspective it really, really makes me sad. Marvel does this kind of thing all the time as does DC (DCnU, anyone?) and it always seems to be a ploy to bring in these elusive and possibly imaginary “new readers” who would be put off the higher number. But I, and many other people, would love to see one of these decades old books naturally reach #1000 but it seems that the people who are making the comics (or at least publishing them) don’t share the sentiment. It’s just a bummer.

Enough of this “Intro” stuff; full review after the jump.

[WARNING: This review spoils the final twist of this issue. However since this issue came out some time ago it's should be public knowledge by now. Still, avoid if you don't want it spoiled.]
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