X-Men Divided We Stand #1 (OF 2)

I have some, well, issues with this issue, and it took me a little while to work through them enough that I could even read it properly, much less write a review.  But the source of my problem is external to the comic itself, so I'll get that out of the way before I talk about "Divided We Stand." 

Anyone who has been following the main X-books (or Marvel's hype machine) knows that "the X-men are no more."  The thirteen issue "Messiah Complex" crossover culminated in Cyclops making this announcement: with Xavier presumed dead, he was disbanding the X-men.   Subsequent issues of  "Uncanny X-men" and the renamed  adjectiveless/X-men: Legacy series (as well as the new spinoff books 'X-Force' and 'Young X-men') have dealt with this development.  Now, in "X-men: Divided We Stand" a showcase of writers and artists have gotten together to tell small stories about individual characters dealing with the fallout of the disbanding.  I love this idea, in theory.  I wish comics would slow down more often to consider how the marquee events are affecting seemingly peripheral characters. 

My problem isn't with 'Divided We Stand,' but with the big gaping hole at the center of the premise.  'Messiah Complex' showed us Cyclops' announcement; Uncanny and the other books are showing us the aftermath.  Nowhere in any of these books do we actually get the perspective of the people who made the decision.  Why do we have a whole issue of Cannonball and Hellion and Anole trying to figure out what happened, but not a couple lines of dialogue in 'Uncanny' to clue us in on where Cyclops and Emma are coming from?  It makes the whole exercise seem weird and unbalanced. 

Unless the intention is to leave the readers in the same place as the confused former students (and if so, is that a good idea?), it just gives me the impression "Cyclops broke up the X-men because editorial said so,"  and misses the opportunity to mine any dramatic material out of a major change in the core team.  It occurs to me that it's possible that this was actually supposed to come out right after Messiah Complex, and that the second issue of the mini might be leading up to some payoff about the core X-men.  But in that case the timing is doing a lot of damage.  Just because I'm reading in a serialized medium, I don't think that means I should have to wait 8 months to find out why the characters are doing what they're doing.

Now I've been ranting for four paragraphs and haven't gotten to the issue yet, so --
Story 1:  I wanted to like this story about Sam Guthrie (Cannonball) discovering he couldn't go home again, but I have to say I was distracted by the cheesecakey art on Sam's teenage sister.  Eww.  This kind of thing doesn't usually trip me up, but it was so gratuitous and out of step with the story here.  Also, Paige used to be an X-man. Why doesn't she know what the Danger Room is?
Story 2: I've read Kyle & Yost's 'New X-men' off on and on, but I don't know much about Nezhno, the Russian/Wakandan X-man.  In any case, this story told me all I needed to know, and the art was lovely.  Probably my favorite of the lot (though I was a bit confused by the Wakandans' alleged xenophobia.  Isn't it supposed to be a super-enlightened country? Unless that's something that's previously been established, it seemed like a manipulative way of getting Nezhno to miss his teammates.)
Story 3: Not much to say about this tale of Anole and Northstar, but I do love Skottie Young's art.
Story 4: This one was kind of weird.  Did Emma really just knock him out and run off?  That seems -- odd.  I did like seeing Magneto, and his reaction to Hellion's attempts to become a henchman. It is a little scary when Mags is the voice of reason, but then, Julian's sort of an idiot.
Story5: I had to look up Scalphunter's wiki to have a clue what was going on -- but apparently he's the Marauder who wounded Nightcrawler during Messiah Complex.  Oh, NOW it makes sense.  Matt Fraction has said he has too much art school in his system, and it kind of showed here, but overall a neat story.

So in the end, I'm glad I read this, though the story gaps in the core books are going to continue to bug me until/unless someone bothers to fix them.