Advance Review
Uncanny X-Men #491
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Salvador Larocca
I reviewed Issue # 490 last month here and -apparently- liked it enough to come back for more. Brubaker has a nice little plot going, albeit with some obvious string pulling, but he is talented enough to pull it off. Or at least he was, last month. Will that continue or will he fall too heavily into set-up at the expense of moving the plot?
As the issue opens, we have the Magneto subplot furthered, before we get into the main course with a trapped and very claustrophobic Storm. I’m not crazy about how she got herself in this confined area, but it still makes for a very effective scene, letting the art convey the tension so the text can focus on plot needs. The latter is resolved fairly handily in the expected manner; the Morlocks never could do anything properly. The main plot wraps up nice and tidy, with the X-Men making their own fate, setting up a natural theme.
This issue is good, but a lot of the tension build-up from earlier in the arc is just shrugged off here. At the end of the previous installment it seemed like claustrophobia would be a major issue for Storm, but that was swept aside in this issue; it is only the first and simplest conflict to be calmly overcome by the X-Men here. While in plot logic, they should be able to accomplish this, their ease with this is still a bit jarring after the previous issue’s cliffhanger.
Thematically, this is trite. It’s about making your own fate and not letting fear and fate rule you, but it’s handled so effortlessly, as to trivialize the very problems at hand.
The Magneto subplot is far more interesting and while it’s still on a slow simmer, two major revelations come to bear here. Magneto should be dead a hundred times, here he is used as a force of fate effecting events in the background, making for an effective symbolic use of this iconic character.
Overall the main plotline feels a bit tacked on, but knowing it’s clearly a lead in to the Messiah Complex crossover makes it more acceptable. If the plot were to be throwaway, the characters had to ring clearly true, which they do, and the plot had to have something to say thematically, which it certainly did not. Brubaker is capable of so much more.
