Uncanny X-Men 489
“The Extremists, part 3” (main story)
Publisher: Marvel
Published: Aug. 2007
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Salvador Larocca
Letters: Joe Caramagna
Colors: Jason Keith
Cover: Larocca

Synopsis

Storm leads a band of X-Men in pursuit of the morlock Masque, while Professor X and Nightcrawler search for Magneto.

What’s going here

This issue is a bit of a jumble, and made more so by there being a back-up story featuring the Beast’s attempts to restore mutantdom in the wake of M-Day. It had been a long time since I read this issue, so definitely felt dropped in the middle of a few storylines I couldn’t quite grasp. Despite all that, I enjoyed the comic, in part because Ed Brubaker does a good job of setting the scenes, and deploying his noir sensibility to create an atmosphere of moody forboding. Brubaker isn’t an obvious choice for an X-Men writer, but when the action calls for paranoid creeping around sewers, he’s perfect.

What I liked

Larocca’s cover. I’ll even relax my normally strict stance against portraying Ben as a giant (he’s only about six feet tall, according to Kirby) to allow for this slightly gigantic Thing. Or I will assume Storm is standing in a hole.

This issue takes place during the brief period when Storm and the Black Panther—who were then married—replaced Reed and Sue in the Fantastic Four, and there’s some fun interactions between Ben and Ororo, as seen above, and between Johnny and the other mutants, in this case Warpath, Caliban and Hepzibah (technically an alien and not a mutant, I think).

I also liked the undercurrent of menace surrounding Masque and his campaign to disfigure New Yorkers. It’s sinister and creepy and something Brubaker does very well.

What I didn’t like

The backup story, featuring Beast and I think Dark Beast (it’s never said explicitly) is talky and not very fulfilling. It’s the sixth installment in an 17-part (!) ongoing story running n the mutant books and as I recall it was hard to follow then and impossible now.

Overall

A fun, somewhat different X-Men story from a talented team.