The X-Men franchise have been a walking corpse since they were robbed of their central metaphor and thus half their motivation (besides aliens and cyclical soap opera) in 2005 with M-Day, which was a Quesada/Bendis jam. Until anyone at Marvel can see it for what it is, a colossal failure, anything else is just a stunt.
Tom Brevoort did warn us several weeks ago to prepare for the inevitability of UNCANNY X-MEN being relaunched at CBR. In that he was telling the truth, and I assumed he was.
It was pointed out that due to this, HELLBLAZER is currently the longest running sequential volume of a U.S. comic, not counting ARCHIE (which should be around issue #600 but is far less due to not really counting until about issue #114).
Someone said something prophetic in, of all things, the special feature segment in the DVD of "ULTIMATE AVENGERS", about how the Avengers of the 90's before the Busiek/Perez era were "chasing trends instead of setting them". If memory serves, Tom Brevoort himself said that, but I could be wrong. Now, the X-Men are doing this here. They're chasing after CIVIL WAR's dust as well as DC's, and GREEN LANTERN of all things.
Until the core problems of M-Day are removed completely, instead of partial measures like GENERATION HOPE, I don't think anyone can make UXM what it used to be. I mean think of all the talented writers who have failed to make that status quo work - Ed Brubaker, Peter Milligan, Matt Fraction, and now Kieron Gillen (who, like on THOR, seems to be a hatchet-man whose sole gig is to wrap up loose end continuity stories and do little else). This is akin to a woman who whines about how all her relationships with different men all end the same way - eventually you gotta stop blaming THEM, honey, and take a look within.
It's a stunt. UXM will either return with #1 or be replaced by 2-3 other books with fresh #1's and it will spike sales for approximately one, maybe two months and then things will be right back in standard decline, at best. At worst, it may backfire like giving Daken WOLVERINE and shifting Logan to WOLVERINE: WEAPON X, which was a disaster from which Wolverine's franchise has STILL not recovered. The fact that nobody was demoted editorially for that debacle speaks volumes at the lack of accountability at that level. I get the feeling Marvel editorial are a close knit group, but so close that nobody holds anyone else accountable. And while that may be fine for a tree-house club, for a business that doesn't ****ing work.
