UNCANNY X-MEN #517
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Size: pages
Price: 2.99
The main problem with the tracing technique that Greg Land uses is that if he changes models from one issue to the next, you get problems like the pudgy-face Cyclops in this issue. He appears to have hit the burrito stand on Nation X a couple of times in the thirty seconds between the end of the last issue, and the beginning of this one. And I don’t know what Olympic website he pulled his picture of Rogue diving into Predator X from, but it doesn’t look right, especially between the Superman pungh/flying pose in the panel above it, and the Rogue melting panel beneath it. On the other hand, I love his Storm.
Apart from the background.foreground characters always being some sort of dramatic porn pose for no good reason, the art wasn’t so jarring that it pulled me out of the story. While I still don’t think Fraction has more than a preliminary grip on the way these characters have been interacting with each other for the decades before he took over, this issue was a compelling, fun X-action story. With a god-awful, terrible cover. Seriously, Land, not only are you a Photoshopping tracer, but you’ve got to slap your X-decoupage project on the front of this book and call it a cover? Ewww.
Art: 2 - Average
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@akamuu
1. Agree that the cover was terrible. It was almost like what one might expect from a junior high school kid.
2. Also agree that Cyclops looked silly. In the panel in which he welcomed Storm’s arrival, I have a feeling that the face model was Tom Cruise.
3. Don’t agree about the porn poses. In this issue, the characters moved a bit stiffly, but the posing for the sake of posing was less obvious than in recent Land issues.
4. Any thoughts on the writing of this issue? I thought it was really exciting.
thought the art was weird in spots but a good read
@coltrane88: I agree that the porn poses are less obvious int his issue, but they’re still there, and it bothers me, the way it used to bother me that Jim Lee’s X-Men had legs that would never support their weight. I forgive them both a bit, as this is a superhero comic, and not a representation of real life, but it still irks me.
I thought the writing was ok. The concept was cool, and, if I hadn’t read most of the last thirty-five years or so of the X-Men, I’d probably like it a lot more. What the characters are doing is interesting, but Fraction seems to have no interest in keeping the characters behaving the way previous writers do. And, sometimes, they act inconsistently from issue to issue.
I know that people behave erratically and inconsistently in life, but some of the decisions (and I don’t have the issue in front of me right now, so I have no specific examples from this issue) they make seem more about creating his story than making his characters believable. Which is fine from a story perspective (why I gave it a 4), but I’m a continuity guy, so it sets the story a little off-kilter for me. But definitely exciting.
@peteropeterson: Yes, I did enjoy the story.
could this issue read any quicker?
I extended the read time by searching for Predator X 003, like a Where’s Waldo. No sign of him, which I can only assume was intentional. Disturbing that Fraction needs 3 digits for Predator numbering. Hope you like Predators.