Blogathon 14: Uncanny X-Men #395

And now we begin Casey's run proper with part one of the four-part "Poptopia."

The biggest question you should ask while reading this issue is "Wait, a Welsh pop star?" That's right. Casey kicks things off with Sugar Kane, a Welsh pop star who looks more in the Britney Spears mould than anything else, and her run-in with Chamber, the former member of Generation X, whose face and chest are nothing but glowing energy. I knew when Casey was announced that Chamber would show up because Casey had mentioned in one of those Wizard specials on the X-books that he thinks Chamber is the shit.

Meanwhile, Iceman, Nightcrawler and Archangel are also in London because Cerebra picked up some large mutant signal, which turns out to be a bunch of ugly mutants living in tunnels. Nightcrawler delivers a baby and the X-Men get chased away by a one-eyed mutant named Cyclops (probably the only clever thing in the issue).

Sugar Kane has her people track down Chamber and, suddenly, he's partying with a pop princess.

The issue ends with a really lame villain called Mr. Clean using a flamethrower to kill the London tunnel dwellers.

So, let's see, we've got the Cannonball/Lila Cheney romance, the Morlocks, the typical "hates mutants because they're abominations" villain and not much else. None of it handled with any originality, none of it new.

As long as you haven't read it before. The problem with Casey purposefully reusing these plots is that, unlike other forms of popculture, kids don't read comics. The only people reading Uncanny X-Men have been doing so for years, so there's no chance to reuse old elements and "put one over on the ignorant little shits," because there are none. I mean, yeah, reusing old stuff works great in music, but not in comics. That's why this run failed I think (I'm sure I'll keep finding a new "reason why this run failed" every issue, though).

Oh, and the art by Ian Churchill in this issue and the previous one sucks. Awful.