Of Darkest Nights

• Writer - Chuck Austen
• Penciler - Salvador Larroca
• Inker - Danny Miki
• Colorist - Udon Studios
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Rus Wooton
• Ass't Editor - Cory Sedlmeier
• Ass't Editor - Stephannie Moore
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  I have a little more time for Austen's Uncanny X-Men filler arc, which at least hits on the right idea - bridge from New X-Men into Excalibur using the funeral of Magneto, and provide some closure beyond what was included in "Planet X." There genuinely is a function for an epilogue to deal with this, so in principle this ought to be on the right lines.

  Of course, it doesn't really work - what do you expect? But it's at least on the right lines. After last issue gave us a rant by Wolverine about why Magneto didn't deserve to be commemorated, this time Polaris gets to do the rebuttal. Where things break down is that Polaris doesn't actually make an argument that Magneto deserves to be mourned. That argument is easily enough made - almost everything he did in his career was attributable to a genuine and legitimate fear of human persecution, or to mental illness. Hell, he was an X-Man for a while.

  Instead, Polaris makes the argument that Magneto was right. Essentially, her point is that Magneto correctly saw disaster coming and responded proportionately; anything short of that is inadequate. Austen seems to be positioning her as an heir to Magneto's philosophy, which would be fair enough if he wasn't also keeping her on the team.

  The most basic problem with Polaris' storyline in this book (aside from the fact that her personality has been written with no consistency or believability whatsoever) is that she's been so clearly unstable that if the X-Men had any sense, they'd have kicked her off the team months ago. And locked her in a padded cell. Austen's gone so far over the top with her that the storyline ceases to work. He doesn't help matters by having her give ludicrous arguments for her position - how exactly did humans destroy Genosha, given that the whole thing was Cassandra's fault? And why on earth is she blaming them for the death of Colossus, which was a suicide in order to stop a designer virus released by a cloned mutant from an alternate future?

  If Austen was capable of subtlety then having Lorna toy with these ideas while hanging around on the team might work. But because he isn't, we get a character who's clearly a raving lunatic being kept around as a team member. It just doesn't add up. This story would have worked passably if it had ended with Lorna storming off and setting up as a supervillain, but as a rebuttal it's just garbled, and misses the point. And it means that the story loses sight of actually bookending Magneto's career.

  Still, he's on the right lines, I suppose. The ideas aren't horrible, so much as the overblown execution. But it still misses the mark.

  Rating: C+