Morrison as a choice to take over an X-title made a lot of sense. They had already done some work for Marvel’s Marvel Knights line, an imprint contracted out to Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti that had been so successful that Quesada was tapped to be the new Marvel Editor-in-Chief. Prior to Morrison coming over to do Marvel Boy, they were pretty much a DC-writer exclusively. However, by the end of their JLA run and The Invisibles, Morrison had threatened retirement, upset over the perceived similarities between The Matrix and the planned ending of The Invisibles (at least, that was what was presented at the time in the pages of Wizard that my teenage self gobbled up as gospel). Their jump to Marvel was quite the coup and, since it had initially been for Quesada, that the writer who revolutionised the Justice League all the way to a top-tier comic after so long as a bit of an afterthought taking on Marvel’s biggest franchise that had been languishing in the mire of continuity and irrelevance was Big News. Joe Casey, as he himself admits, was sort of just along for the ride, taking advantage of a big opportunity that came hot on the heels of taking over Adventures of Superman. Who would say no to writing Superman and the X-Men at the same time? How many have been given the chance? Never mind that he didn’t really have any strong desire or ideas...
When you look at a writer’s body of work, patterns emerge. For Casey, the most predominant pattern that I’ve always noticed is that his best work typically answers the question “What happens after?” The ‘after’ is variable... it could be what happens after the war ends? What happens after Bruce Wayne quits being Batman? What happens after Doom Patrol breaks up? What happens after enlightenment? (Another big pattern is “What happened between the panels of old Stan Lee comics?” though he hasn’t indulged that one in quite a while...) He’s always shown an interest in exploring what happens after the story typically ends, wanting to venture off the grid as it were, seeing where things go into uncharted territory.
With taking over Uncanny X-Men, there was no ‘after’ there. No pressing question, no brand new territory to explore. There was just... the X-Men. The human/mutant problems. A whole pile of continuity and the franchise’s most popular writer just shunted to the side and a decade of rampant editorial interference that fucked over some friends of his and none of that is a particularly compelling status quo from which stories spring. Grant Morrison had a desire and a concept for how to propel the X-Men forward in new and exciting ways. Joe Casey had a desire to not blow a big opportunity that would be great for his career. (Spoiler: he did not succeed.)
With that in mind: Uncanny X-Men #394 also had the weird ‘honour’ of being the first issue of the Morrison/Casey run. Despite being two separate titles that may or may not connect directly, since the inception of X-Men, both it and Uncanny were treated as a singularish creative vision. The writers positioned as a collective duo that, while doing their own thing, were also joined at the hip where, presumably, their creative plans would happen in concert. Moreover, Casey, always being mindful of marketing optics, knew that there was an element of hype of the two of them taking over the titles. While Morrison was the star of the show, Casey was the rising star, and being left to make the initial statement, he kinda whiffed it through good intentions and overthinking it.
Only four X-Men are in the comic, two that would exclusively appear in New X-Men (Cyclops and Jean Grey), one that would exclusively appear in Uncanny (Angel), and one that the two titles would share (Wolverine). This group would literally never recur in either Uncanny X-Men or New X-Men. They face a one-off threat that would never recur. It was largely predicated on intercharacter drama that would continue in a different form in New X-Men. Basically, Casey tried to do a bit of a big introduction, but wound up delivering something akin to a fill-in issue... that would be judged as the first impression of their collective new era on the X-Titles. As a result, it didn’t take too long before New X-Men siloed itself off as a singular creative vision and Uncanny X-Men became a bit of a maligned afterthought, never quite able to find the juice until the very end when it was too late. And, then, Casey was gone after around a year and a half just like the franchise’s greatest writer immediately preceding him.
