Editor's Note: Uncanny X-Men #510 arrives in stores tomorrow, May 20.

Despite having very little knowledge of the history and continuity of the X-Men, I've been quite enjoying the book since issue #500, which saw the team relocate to San Francisco. Matt Fraction has made the book reasonably accessible for newcomers without sacrificing the large cast of characters and the team's sense of history, and has also managed to do a good job in presenting the core X-Men themes of discrimination and the persecution of minorities in a modern context. However, the last couple of issues have seen the title get bogged down in a storyline that's frankly struggling to hold my interest.

One problem with the story is my lack of prior investment in the characters that feature in it. I'm not familiar with many of the villains who have shown up over the course of the last couple of issues, and Fraction doesn't manage to convey their (apparently quite complex) backstories in such a way that a reader like me can easily make sense of their relationship with the X-Men, or of their personal motivations. As such, I don't really buy into the threat posed to the team on an emotional level, making the conflict feel a little empty and hollow.

Another problem is that there are so many characters to juggle in this story that there isn't a lot of room for Fraction to inject his distinctive voice into their individual characterisations. Other than the tongue-in-cheek introductory captions (which continue to provide amusement), the writer's take on the various characters is pretty unremarkable. Unfortunately, it's also difficult to distinguish between many of the characters visually, due to the weaknesses of Fraction's artist.

Greg Land is an artist with an exaggerated but not altogether undeserved reputation for similar-looking characters, especially when it comes to females. Regardless of the accusations of "tracing" (I don't really care one way or another how an artist produces his work -- I'm only interested in the final product), this makes him a poor choice to illustrate a story like this one, which features several different female characters on both the heroes' and villains' sides (having said that, the identical triplet Stepford Cuckoos are tailor-made for him).

Colourist Justin Ponsor does his best to distinguish the samey characters from one another, but there are still plenty of examples of a character not being instantly recognisable, forcing readers to stop and work out exactly who they're looking at, and interrupting the pacing of the book as a result. There's even a scene in which a female character's face is gently blurred out (in order to keep her identity a secret), encouraging readers to look harder at her face for a clue as to who it might be -- thus unintentionally drawing extra attention to the fact that she looks virtually identical to every other female character in the book.

Another problem with the artwork is the stock poses, which become very distracting in an action-based issue like this one. I'm not a particularly ardent follower of Land's work, but I can't help but be reminded of previous books by many of his panels (for example, there's a full splash page here that's very reminiscent of his cover for Ultimate Power #8, and other poses that feel highly reminiscent of the fight sequences from that series). The frustrating thing is that the more distinctive sections of the book that require Land to be a little more creative -- such as Armor's armour, or the dragon creatures that she and X-23 fight -- are quite good, and hint at a potential that isn't realised by the rest of his artwork.

This is a fairly forgettable issue that virtually ignores the only part of the book that I was still interested in -- the attempts of Beast and his team of scientists to research the original catalyst for mutation -- in favour of a bland fight sequence that doesn't carry any emotional weight for me due to my lack of history with the characters involved. I'm hoping that Fraction wraps up this particular storyline soon, because it's starting to turn me off an otherwise enjoyable run on the book.

---

What did you think of this book?
Have your say at the Line of Fire Forum!

---