Uncanny X-Men #454

Posted: Thursday, February 10, 2005
By: Jason Cornwell

"Cardinal Law Chasing Hellfire, Part 3 of 3"

Writer: Chris Claremont
Art: Andy Park
Colors: Morry Hollowell
Letters: VC's Chris Eliopoulos
Publisher: Marvel Comics
$2.25 U.S. / $3.25 CAN

Plot:
As the X-Men battle the forces of Donald Pierce, we see their efforts prove to be less than effective, as Pierce's minions don't stay down after they've been knocked down, and Pierce is able to put on a pretty impressive showing, as he tears into Wolverine. However the X-Men are able to turn the tables when they manage to free Sebastian Shaw who makes pretty quick work of Pierce, and the X-Men are forced to consider that Shaw's new heroic behaviour might be genuine.

Comments:
To be completely honest this book simply isn't working for me, as while Chris Claremont has assembled a team that features several characters that I consider myself quite fond of (Nightcrawler, Storm and Rachel), I can't help but feel detached from the book's cast, as most of the character development feels like a rush to reassert past behaviour rather than develop new aspects of these characters. Now I'm sure I'll get e-mails pointing to developments like the love triangle between Kurt, Storm, and Rachel, or Sage's decision to side with Shaw as new terrain, but the simple truth of the matter is that these developments are so poorly motivated, that it's difficult to get overly invested in any of them, and given Chris Claremont's tendency to completely forget about these developments when he moves on to a new plot certainly help to keep one from becoming overly attached to these ideas. This arc also suffers from the overall sense that Chris Claremont has already covered this material, as all he's really done is place Shaw into the role that Magneto normally plays, and we have the X-Men involved in the same tired story where they have to trust an old enemy in order to defeat an even greater evil. Still there were moments in the issue that I did enjoy, as there's a nice little moment where we see Nightcrawler questions whether Wolverine needed to kill their attackers rather than disarm them, and I also found the battle between Wolverine and Pierce to be quite exciting, though I was annoyed that the brain eating combat nannites were abruptly rendered a non-threat simply because the battle with Pierce had ended.

Andy Park turns in a pretty solid issue, as the action has a nice sense of energy to it, with Wolverine's battle with Pierce being the visual highlight, as the art manages to nicely raise the level of tension, as Logan is subjected to a series of highly effective attacks. The art also does some nice work capturing the raw power that Rachel is able to bring to the table as she's able to turn the tables on a seemingly victorious Selene with a explosion of energy. In fact my only real quibble with the action is that the shock troops that the X-Men battle in this issue feature a rather generic design, and it becomes a little difficult to view them as threats when the art does little to reinforce the writing's continued insistence that they are. Still, the art does some nice work on the big scene where Shaw defeats Pierce, and if nothing else Sage's expression in that final panel does an effective job of selling her new pro-Shaw attitude.