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Writer:
Matt Fraction
Artist:
Terry Dodson
Letters:
Joe Caramagna
This issue's solicitation came as a huge and hugely welcome surprise to me. There are a few factors that can completely ruin a comic for me, you see, Steve Dillon, Skottie Young, and the Claremont/Davis Captain Britain Omniverse bullshit are good examples, and chief among them is Greg Land. I just can't get over the fact that every one of my beloved characters is suddenly all grinny and picture-perfect, not to mention a different movie star on every page. That said, I do enjoy his Pixie quite a lot, as she's different enough in character and in baseline human physical appearance to be dynamic and unique under his pencils.
That said, there are also a few things that can make me squeal over a comic like a little girl, Magik for instance, and chief among them is Madelyne Pryor, the erstwhile clone of Jean Grey created by Mister Sinister. She married Scott Summers, fathered Nathan Summers, turned evil, screwed Alex Summers, struck a bargain with the demon N'astirh, demonified New York, was killed, ressurected by Nate Grey, joined the Hellfire club, and generally fucked with his head, including killing the only other girl he cared about, Threnody, and...
Oh, I could go on like this for hours. If the comic has Maddy or Illyana in it? I read it. No matter what. And it's very, very hard to get me to dislike it.
Yet, Marvel keeps doing it EVERY time. First, with Skottie Young's abysmal art on an already poorly-written but well-conceived arc involving Belasco sensing Illyana's presence in House of M and pulling...
I'm doing it again, aren't I? Yeah. Okay, it was fucked up. It didn't quite make sense, and the art was entirely not suited to it, and Illyana looked like Satan's butch daughter. That ain't right.
That said, when Greg Land introduced this red-haired figure in bondage gear, I FERVENTLY hoped that this was not my Maddy, as that would be a character-raping so supreme that... Oh... It would be like Peter Parker made a deal with the devil, or Beast threatened to release the Legacy Virus on an already-cured Earth... Something like that.
And in this issue, we get absolute confirmation that it is, indeed, Maddy, who I've wanted back since long before I read comics regularly.
I've sort of gone off on a tangent again, haven't I? As I was saying, This issue's solicitation came as a huge and hugely welcome surprise to me because the art is by Terry Dodson instead of the frankly abhorrent Greg "I Only Photo-Reference, Really!" Land. With Maddy back? No Land? I was like a kid at a candy store!
So, with a big smile, I flipped through the book, eager as can be for a site of my fair Madelyne, singing "I can see clearly now, The Land is gone...!" And then my smile lost a bit of its lustre. Drooped, in fact, slowly turning down at the corners until it was a decent-sized frown. See, I realized something rather important. I don't like Terry Dodson's art, especially not on a team book. He tends to draw his women in a particular way, and by particular I mean similar, which really doesn't work for a book with as diverse and strong female characters as the X-Men. I'd have no objection to him on... Say... Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk...Hellcat, maybe... But with the varied cast, it's no go for me. With Land, each character was different in each panel. Now, everyone's the same.
That said, it's still a humungous improvement over Greg Land. Now, on to the actual issue itself... Not much happens, and that which does happen is very disconnected to what went on before and what goes on in the other X-titles. Colossus is mopey. Cyke keeps secrets. Maddy is alive. Tattoos are evil. Colossus smash. Something like that.
It entirely failed to catch my interest. And, sadly, this is an improvement. For stories that I should be loving and drooling over every month concerning some of my favorite semi-obscure and deceased X-characters... They're really going out of their way to do a shitty job. I am barely hanging on as a reader of Uncanny X-Men, almost entirely, now, due to the promise of Maddy.
I can't give this book anything higher than a Three out of Five, and that's generous due to the favorable contrast of Land-illustrated previous issues... Which I am slowly thinking higher and higher of.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Christ, can we just have Chuck Austen back? Or, God forbid... Greg Land? 
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