Uncanny X-Men #600

Cover art for ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #600 by Chris Bachalo

• Written by Brian Michael Bendis
• Art by Kris Anka, Mahmud A. Asrar, Chris Bachalo, Stuart Iommonen, Frazer Irving & Sara Pichelli
• Cover by Chris Bachalo

The final explosive issue in Brian Michael Bendis’ epic X-Men saga! Scott Summers- savior or destroyer? Questions will be answered! The Jean Grey School, the New Xavier School, it’s all going to change. The X-Men are at a crossroads. And not everyone will make it through in one piece. Featuring 40 pages of a host of popular X-Men creators!

Pickup your copy of ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #600 at Comixology now!

There’s been rumours flying around for quite some time now that Marvel are making a huge effort to kill off the X-Men franchise purely due to the fact that TV and film rights are owned by 20th Century Fox and not Marvel Studios themselves.

Case in point being that the X-Men have become separated from the main Marvel Comics universe and been replaced by the Inhumans. Similarly in the TV world ‘Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ has been heavily pushing the Inhumans in preparation for the previously announced (and possibly now cancelled) film of the same name.

That being said the mutant team have had several different comic streams ongoing of late. In particular I was a big fan of the ‘All-New X-Men’ franchise which came to an end recently but is due to pick this up again with a new #1 issue due in December.

‘Uncanny X-Men’ is also going back to the beginning with a new #1 in December and with it comes a new creative team of writer Cullen Bunn and artist Greg Land but not before Brian Michael Bendis signs off the series with this bumper issues.

It would be too difficult to cover each artists in this issue one-by-one so lets just say there are good pages and there are pages which could have been different. Generally it’s a well drawn issue but this mashed up styles do jar with each other in some instances. Stuart Immonen is a standout artist for me and I’ve always enjoyed his work this Marvel so his pages are my particular favourites.

This issue is all about story and there’s a lot to tie up here. Some of it is covered incredibly well: the trial of Beast and the final scenes with present day Cyclops. Other parts of the story feel hugely rushed: Young Bobby discussing his sexuality with present day Bobby is the prime culprit. Years of comic continuity is entirely overwritten by one conversation ending with a slightly cringeworthy discussion about Angel. I’m all for LGBT characters in comics where it’s organic but if we are to believe he’s been in denial for all these years as he says then I think it would take more than a short conversation to get him to open up.

Bendis has had the keys to the X-Men kingdom for some time now so this issue had a lot of high expectations put upon it. It has a lot of the existentialism we’ve come to expect given all the time/universe bending action that has gone on but really there was no way everything could be finished in the space of this one issue. The main plot points that won’t be going forwards find themselves neatly ended but the X-Men are no less fractured at the end than they are at the beginning in fact they are possibly even more so by the issues close.

Bends was really building up to the not-quite-final-scene, a game changing moment at the hands of Cyclops which will have huge ramifications for any writer stepping in to the various new X-Men series due to start by the close of the year. Much like how Beast bringing the young X-Men to the present day set the status quo for the most recent run this new revolution will once again set the scene for the next few years.

The bookending scene with Beast is incredibly sombre and part of me is left wondering if Beast has been a depiction of Bendis’ time with the X-Men. Beasts leaving mirrors Bendis’ own exit from the series albeit tonally very different.

It’s not the ending that I was hoping for but it’s certainly the best ending for such a complex set of stories.

4 stars