Uncanny X-Men #502

For a generation or more, the Uncanny X-Men have stood at the top of the comic book heap (in terms of sales), which is pretty amazing for fans who've been around since the beginning.

The super-team, as formulated by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, started with a simple but phenomenal idea - placing young people with super-powers in a school to learn how to use their abilities. Even better, they bypassed the ever-present origin problem with the smoothest explanation possible. No need for radioactive spiders, exploding gamma bombs or exposure to cosmic rays - these young people have powers because they're mutants, and they were born that way.

Despite the strong beginnings under Lee and Kirby, the X-Men comic was never a huge sales success. Other creators tackled the comic, including Roy Thomas, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams (to name a few), and while sales were fair, the book never seemed to click, and it was cancelled in the early '70s.

But the team never quite went away completely. The title returned as reprints, and eventually was brought back to life with new stories in Giant-Size X-Men #1, with Len Wein and Dave Cockrum at the helm.

With a great cast, excellent stories and fantastic art, the book's popularity soared, finally becoming Marvel's top-selling book under Chris Claremont and John Byrne. It stayed at the top of the heap for years afterward, and only recently has it slipped from the top spot.

The main reason for the slip is probably the fact that there are so many X-books out there to choose from. When a comics company has a best-seller, it can choose to keep that comic at the top, or spin off related titles and settle for massive total sales, instead of one title in the top spot. (For examples, see: Spider-Man, Superman and Batman.)

So the comic racks are jammed with Uncanny X-Men, New X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, Young X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, and so on. The result is that the stories get watered down, the cast spread thin, and the focus lost (one wonders how Wolverine keeps his schedule balanced with all his appearances in his own comic, the X-books and Avengers titles, too).

It looked like the Uncanny X-Man book was in for a renaissance with the addition of writer Ed Brubaker, who is turning in excellent work on books like Captain America and Daredevil - but it hasn't worked out that way. His X-Men stories are solid and professional, but the book has still seemed aimless.

Now they've brought in co-writer Matt Fraction and artist Greg Land and made some changes to the status quo (most of them initiated in issue #500). The team now makes its home in San Francisco, and the focus is on the original "New X-Men" team, so those are positive steps.

Land's art is very good, though it remains to be seen if his "good girl" art style is the right fit for this comic - but so far, I give him very high marks.

It's the story end that still needs work. The ongoing storyline involves the Hellfire Club stirring up anti-mutant violence, but so far the story doesn't seem to be building to a larger canvas.

The foundation is in place for bigger and better things - but the question remains, can "Uncanny" make a return to past glories and carve out its own place at the top?

Grade: B-