Uncanny X-Men #10: Homesteading

Gail Simone has a tremendous gift for balancing quiet (necessary) character moments with heart-stopping action. In this instance, the heart-stopping is painfully literal, but more on that in a moment. This issue opens with Nightcrawler’s gentle musings on the themes of home and teams, and whether he has a place in either, while helping a new friend get some housework done, before he is interrupted by, first, the consequences of Lucifer (the cat) deciding to live up to his name and, second, the actions which result from his own heroism.

Interspersed with this emotionally-deep but externally-quiet narration are the scenes of the carnage unfolding at the local mall when the fun-day-out Jubilee promised to her students has delivered far more excitement than any of the characters were anticipating. The robot-dog attack has shut down Deathdream’s heart and lungs, meaning that Jitter and Ransom have sixty seconds to run a race which could potentially save his life, even as Calico uses the ensuing battle to arrive at some long-overdue self-realizations. Of course, the young ones triumph at each of their tasks. For this flavor of X-Men, tactical failure isn’t an option any more than physical victory is the point. The new kids’ dogfight was intended as a means of presenting the fruits of the psychological development which has taken place over the last ten issues. This fight was a means of conveying, through the fabric of the narrative, exactly how far this team has come, and as such it was incredibly successful.

It’s worth noting that a large part of the issue’s success emerged as a direct result of the strength of the art. Andrei Bressan’s exquisite line-work (elevated by Matthew Wilson’s tonally-perfect coloring) is highly detailed, focusing on conveying atmosphere and allowing the characters to have a tremendous amount of nuance in their acting. The subtle shifts of expression which he allows his characters are, for me, one of the highlights of the series and they are a perishingly rare thing to see in this variety of storytelling.