It’s got to be really difficult to write an X-Man title these days.  Maybe Quesada has a death grip on the franchise.  Maybe all the usually talented writers are being swept away and replaced by Skrulls (I know, the reference was sooooo 2008).  I don’t know why really talented writers can’t write anything more than mediocre X-stories, but it seems like it’s been years since there was a truly exciting X-Men issue.  Ok, I’ve been excited by certain issues because they are, comparatively, better than other X-titles, but, apart from the Messiah Complex issues, the two main X-titles (Uncanny and Legacy) have been…ok.  Decent ideas.  Decent writing.  Decent art.  Just…decent.

This was a decent onesie place holder for the gap between The Sisterhood and Utopia.  Matt Fraction (comic writer, lover of 80’s style narration boxes with quirky character references in them) does an adequate job telling an interesting story that bunny hops off the page, when it aspires to leap.  Team Science is buffered by Angel and Psylocke, and they go back in the past to learn more about the original surge of the mutant gene (as opposed to the mutant, Jean, who appears to, as of this writing, still be dead).  Hijinks ensue.  Ancestors of enemies are involved.   Beast says (spoiler ahead!) “Oh my stars and garters!”  Someone calls Angel a prettyboy.  It all feels retread, even though it’s not a story I think the X-Men have done before.