You're crazy. Gillen's Uncanny run has been fantastic. That Phalanx issue was amazing.
Yeahbutno. I'm sorry. Telling a first-person tale via a throw-away character that doesn't even attempt to mask its melodramatic attempt to tug the heart-strings with its, at best, little bit of laughable emotion is not good writing.
But the art was good. I'm a big fan of Brandon Peterson. Just, Gillen gets no credit for that.
Yeah THIS. Not just the Phalanx issue but the UXM point 1 issue with Magneto, the arc with SWORD and Unit and the current Mr Sinister story.
I'll say this about Gillen's run on Uncanny compared to his other work on Thor and Journey into Mystery (which is the best work I've seen from him) is that UXM has been held back from it's true potential under Gillen because of the editorial mandate with AvX and stuff. He hasn't really been able to settle in and get comfy because everything has been building to AvX since Schism.
Even if you can't tell the story you want to tell, you can still tell a good story. I'm sorry, but sometimes that's what being a professional writer is all about. And I realize that's an idealist stance I'm taking - no need to point that out - but there's no reason he couldn't write good tie-in issues. Because he has. While the initial ones sucked - oh good, you're elaborating on battles from the core story that you've given little to no gravitas for within the issue, thank you so much - the most recent tie-in issues have been much better, even with me thinking he does a melodramatic and overly piss-poor job of writing Sinister.
The first arc was poor - the Breakworld stuff. It went from blatantly moronic set-up to an attempt at a slasher comic. His
Fear Itself tie-ins were quite good. I want to say I didn't hate how he closed off the established volume of
Uncanny in time for the relaunch, which had another faltering start, because the first Sinister issues were hit-and-miss. Not or. They were both.
And yes, Unit is good.
The reason, by the way, I do assault Gillen so much on the Phalanx issue is because of how damn good he actually is at writing his characters. His plots seem to suck, for whatever reason. I don't care to speculate, and there's really no point to. But he gets the characters he chooses as his cast, and executes them rather without much flaw.
. Ah well. Between Mikaboshi and the Demogorge, I'm burnt out on "god-killers)
