InsaneJournal

Fraction's X-Heroes
Four scans from Uncanny X-Men #512, featuring Beast's adventuring X-Club, and four from Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia.

So the X-Club decides that in order to reverse M-Day, they'll need some blood from the parents of a mutant to get a fresh look at how all the genes work; since Wanda wiped out the X-gene in all living people, they have to go back in time. Since one's as good as another, they opt to travel back to San Francisco in 1906 to examine the parents of team member James Bradley/Dr. Nemesis. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley turn out to be steampunk adventurers, with Nicola working on a wireless electrical machine, bankrolled by the Hellfire Club. After perfecting the machine and delivering it, the Hellfire Club (including, of course, a Shaw) puts the hit out on both of them. Nicola is abducted while showing Shaw and co. his invention; Catherine is at home. Angel saves her, but she's injured, so they call for Dr. Nemesis, who had previously been avoiding any contact with his parents (sensibly). Catherine is actually pregnant at the moment, and Nemesis tells her that she has placenta previa and needs to stay confined to bed as much as possible for the remaining duration.




The Hellfire Club has used Nicola's machine to construct a steampunk Sentinel, which the X-Men defeat. However, Nicola is skewered in the resulting explosion...



The X-Club is out of time, and vanishes.

Also, the X-Men caused the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

At issue's end...



I'm not sure whether his mere existence or the source of his name is the bigger paradox here.

Fraction's a big fan of retro stuff like this (see The Five Fists of Science), and this was probably his best work on the title so far.

Speaking of Utopia, here's a selection of my favourite bits; first, Ares is dispatched to quell a disturbance in front of city hall:



That's a well-written Ares.

Also, on the art here, Silvestri is the primary credited artist, but there are like six inkers and three or four credited "pencil assistants", which makes this a really interesting issue to consider for those looking to see how minor differences in pencilwork and inking can affect the outcome. Thing is, some of those guys end up making the art look considerably better than Silvestri's normal stuff.

Anyway, towards the end, Emma meets with Norman, who tells her about his new plan. He then goes to kick things into high gear:





That right there clears up my biggest concern about this story, namely, Professor X's seemingly working with Norman, which looked like yet another instance of him being set up to look like a chump to burnish Scott's shield.

I'm not worried about Emma; she's way too popular at this point (with both fans and creators; in the case of Fraction, she's almost certainly been the most important character in his run) to have anything permanently damaging happen to her.

Nice outfit, too.