Uncanny X-Men: Wolverine and Cyclops, Vol. 2

Uncanny X-Men (2018)

by Matthew Rosenberg, Carlos Gómez (Artist), Carlos Villa (Artist)

Collects Uncanny X-Men (2018) #17-22.

These are dark times for mutants, and they're getting darker by the day. With the X-Men vanished and presumed dead, Cyclops' new team has only just come together — but now they're about to lose one of their own! Elsewhere, the new Black King of the Hellfire Club makes his move! But what is the truth about the club's involvement in the new X-Men's current quest? Meanwhile, the mutant race faces elimination at the hands of a vaccine that will erase the X-Gene from future generations. As Cyclops' cleanup mission nears its close, all the problems the X-Men have faced will come together! The Hellfire Club's sinister plans, the culmination of the O.N.E.'s assaults on mutantkind and even the inner struggles within the team. It all ends here. This is forever!

Genres: Comics, Marvel, X Men, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

152 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 18, 2019

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

"I haven’t always been a writer. My parents are writers and my brother is a writer, and I resisted that as long as I could. When I was 17, I hopped in a band’s van and I went on tour for a summer, and that was it, that was what I wanted to do. I ran a record label for 10 years, a small indie punk label. I did everything in music that you can do that doesn’t involve having musical ability. Eventually the music business, probably in a similar way to comics, will just start to break your heart, and I realized one day that I kind of hated music. I was resigned to thinking, if I’m going to be involved in music forever, I’m going to hate it for the rest of my life. I just stopped. I stopped having any sort of business with music, any involvement.

I read comics my whole life, so I just naturally fell back into another medium that is marginalized and hard to make a living in."

Source: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles...

Writer of comics WE CAN NEVER GO HOME, SECRET WARS JOURNAL, OUR WORK FILLS THE PEWS, 12 REASONS TO DIE, & MENU.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's the last ride of the X-Men as they go from fight to fight to fight without breathing or mourning the gazillion of X-Men who died in this. This almost feels like an alternate reality book because you know none of it is going to stick. Jonathon Hickman is on tap to wipe it all away in House of X. Salvador Larocca has lost something to his art since he started tracing faces over in Star Wars. There's just always something off with the faces he draws now that looks unnatural.

[Tiag⊗ the Mutant · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing departure from Rosenberg, his run, much as every other run that came after Bendis, have been a massive let down, and that's not entirely on the writers, most of these bad decisions were clearly caused by editorial pressure, and this last volume was no different.

I would give Rosenberg a break, but he clearly dropped the ball on this one, specially on that last issue which was some of the worst crap I've read in a while, and the way he ended the iconic Scott/Emma relationship was distasteful at best, a couple that was peaking before Marvel decided to replace the X-Men with the Inhumans, and they deserved a cool breakup at the very least, which Rosenberg couldn't deliver, and that's entirely on him.

This is a very poor volume, only recommended to X-Men completists.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

More truths are revealed, more mutant b-listers, more dead bodies, more drama. Wolverine and Cyclops lead the last X-Men in their rather weird plan to go after mutant-enemies so soon after losing most of the other X-Men. One of the best things about this volume is Logan saying exactly that! Way over-the-to, and with zero character development, this still gets 6 out of 12, for the overall show.
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[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was another fun one!

It starts with the remainder of the X-Men gathering and dealing with Rahne's death and Eulogy and then we have the big fight between Wolverine and Cyclops and then we find out about Emma and her story, her dealing with Callahan and what she did and been messing with their heads, X-Men have to deal with that but before that they have to fight Marauders and Mr Sinister, uncover the plans, assemble together and when all is revealed we see the big plan of Callahan and its one final fight between Callahan and the X-Men, who will survive? who will die? And whose appearance will change the battle?!

Its a big volume with so much surprises and has some great cameos of villains and great twists and the story with Emma was cool though what she had been doing and all, the vaccine thing was weird and Callahan as a villain was quite formidable and I love the reunion of the other X-Men, Cyclops and Jean together and what he does in the end saying they will be X-Men forever and all. Amazing volume with so much heart and great emotional moments and final goodbyes and reunions and affirmations, and this is just the last volume before HOXPOX and its just one of the best, Rosenberg really wrote one of the best volumes here and the art was so good and is complimentary as it makes the writing even better! Just terrific, a must read for every X-fan!

[James DeSantis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Super Letdown. After a first good volume, this one goes way down. A few good fighting moments, even some good interactions, but overly wordy for no reason, a bunch of the same old same old death and inhouse fighting, and pacing is just either TOO quick or dreadfully slow.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be entirely fair to writer Matthew Rosenberg, he had to cut his story short when Marvel rehired Jonathan Hickman to revamp their entire X-Men line. We may never know exactly what Rosenberg had originally planned and how much editorial interfered with what we ended up with.

The volume that led into this one was fantastic and I was really loving the direction of the story, with Cyclops and Wolverine building a small team of desperate X-Men who just wanted to remove some of their enemies off the playing board after most of their team had seemingly died (they had merely been transported to the alternate universe created by Nate Grey, but nobody left in the normal world knew that).

A good chunk of this story was really entertaining and worked well for me (all of the stuff with Emma Frost and how she was handling the Office of National Emergency I quite enjoyed), but there were other parts that didn't work for me at all (mostly the beginning and ending of the story). In the beginning, we learn how Rahne Sinclair died (an event which actually took place off-panel), and it's the cheapest, crappiest death ever, basically just used to tie into modern real-world transphobia. I'm not sure what Rosenberg was trying to accomplish here, but taking a fan-favorite character and then just offing her in an allegory about transgender violence was very poorly done. I realize that the X-Men have always served as an allegory for discriminated minority groups, but the way this was just shoehorned in without serving the overall story caused it to have very little impact and made me wonder if the author just disliked Wolvesbane. And it wasn't really addressed in any meaningful way to give weight to the issue of violence against transgender people either.

Speaking of character deaths, they come so hard and fast in this volume that the vast majority of them feel cheap, with characters barely taking the time to acknowledge them after the funeral of Wolvesbane (for someone who claims to love the X-Men as much as Rosenberg does, he sure does kill off an awful lot of them). These events really feel as if they have no importance or purpose on their own merits and are merely about getting the chess pieces into place for Hickman to play with them (or just added for simple shock value and they'll be "reset" when Hickman takes over).

The ending is particularly rushed and unsatisfying (not necessarily Rosenberg's fault given how much he had to resolve in a very short time), with several characters charging to their deaths for no reason. I get that he was trying to make everything seem as hopeless as possible before the majority of X-Men made their triumphant here-to-save-the-day return, but it's odd to see several character just throw their lives away when they've fought and survived against far worse odds countless times before. If things were truly supposed to be that hopeless, the story didn't do an effective job of selling it to me, and the character deaths feel unearned. And as for Magik, what was the fallout from the demon inside her breaking free? We never find out as we cut to another scene and never learn more about this. It clearly won't matter for Hickman's upcoming story, but it's not exactly satisfying to this one.

Despite these negatives though, much of this really WAS fun to read. I really like the team that Rosenberg put together and how they interact with each other. Their overall mission was really enjoyable to read and as I mentioned before, all of the stuff with Emma Frost was really great (particularly the issue that went back and showed what she'd been up to for the past several months). The art (particularly the issues by Salvador Larroca) was fantastic as always, but a couple pages near the end of the volume where they switch artists are jarringly bad. The climactic ending is probably not the best moment for the worst art to appear.

Ultimately because of how everyone knows that Hickman's story that's going to change everything is right around the corner and because of how this was rushed to conclusion in preparation for that Hickman revamp, the events of this volume feel like they simply don't matter at all. Which is a damn shame, because I was loving where Rosenberg's story was going in the last volume (of course, things would have inevitably changed considerably after the majority of X-Men returned from Nate Grey's alternate universe anyway, so it's hard to say what this story would have been like going forward had it been allowed to continue). I'd like to see Rosenberg get another crack at the X-Men however and have the creative freedom to properly tell a complete story.

2.5 stars

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The clock is ticking, and time is running out for the X-Men. As the ONE draw closer, Emma Frost makes her move, and the X-Men continue to strike off names from their hit list. But they're losing team members thick and fast, and it's only a matter of time before the faith that the remaining team have in Wolverine and Cyclops shatters beyond repair.

I think some context helps with this volume. With Jonathan Hickman's run on the horizon, it was basically carte blanche for Matthew Rosenberg to do whatever the hell he wanted, kill whoever he wanted, and have a blast doing it - and you can tell that he is. You can tell that he loves writing these characters, but he also knows what this freedom means, and he's running with it right to the end.

Reading this in single issues was quite shocking, considering the high body count. But in hindsight, it makes total sense, and in the process Rosenberg manages to rope in as many X-characters as he can along the way, whether to kill them off or just have them do epic things (like Emma Frost - Rosenberg writes a mean Emma Frost), so there's something for everyone here.

On art is Salvador Larocca, with his usual your-mileage-may-vary tracey-faces. as well as Carlos Gomez and Carlos Villa who I could not tell apart if you paid me. The art's fine, but the Larocca issues are the better ones.

If you take this at face value, you'll probably come away with a sour taste in your mouth. But with some context, and a little suspension of belief, this run on Uncanny X-Men is great fun. It may feel inconsequential, especially after reading Powers Of X and House Of X, but that doesn't make it any less fun while it lasts.

[Jesús De la Jara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta parte de la historia es muy interesante pues cuenta cómo Logan y Scott van uniéndose más y cazando objetivos, la parte más divertida desde luego es el reencuentro entre Scott y Emma quien ha removido de los pensamientos de Scott y Logan su existencia misma. Ellos no la recuerdan debido a una modificación psíquica que ella implantó. Sin embargo ahora que ella y el Hellfire Club están siendo asediados por el malvado general Callahan y su organización ONE va a necesitar a todo el equipo de vuelta.
Un regreso al status quo de los X-Men a mi parecer bien logrado aunque lamentablemente la serie acaba aquí y esperamos al siguiente nuevo evento. (Espero que no arruine todo)
El final lo máximo 5 estrellas. Lástima que a mi parecer el dibujante no da la talla y que se hubiera visto todo más épico con otro estilo.

[Sans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well. That was...certainly a book I read!

[Carmen Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this series, but the plot was intensely convoluted even by X-Men standards. Characters were written inconsistently and the dialogue was clunky. And the art... oy. Honestly the best thing about reading this series were the Stan Lee tributes throughout.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matthew Rosenberg's X-Men run continues to head straight downhill, ending up in the dumpster.

The biggest problem is the excessive compression, which makes this volume almost farcical. It's like reading a few years worth of X-Men comic in summary, as they bounce from one villain to another, one plot to another. And there's really no overarching thread to hold everything together: this is just an author pushing characters around in the worse way.

And then there's the murderfest that continues in this volume, as Rosenberg executes another few fan favorites. But it's all so decompressed that there's no time to mourn anyone, except for a single funeral at the start. Sometimes, a character's elimination is so abrupt that it's easy to forget.

It's a shame: Rosenberg offers up some great continuity. A lot of it is little stuff, bringing pack minor characters like the Nasty Boys and the Upstarts. But he also nails the post-Schism antagonism between Scott and Logan and more importantly starts the process of rehabilitating Emma's character.

But his writing just isn't up to snuff, and whenever we move from character to plot, this volume takes a big header. (And the biggest plot of the comic, of a newfound hatred for mutants, in the end seems to go nowhere, exacerbating the issue.)

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the few X-Men things that I enjoyed reading prior to Hickman taking over the franchise. But it really feels a bit rushed. He had to do a lot of drastic things last minutes and quickly before the reset button was pressed. If this had a little more time to breathe, it would have been a bit better.

[RG · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this. The plot was all over the place, plus Rosenberg is too dialgoue heavy at times.

[Michael Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as strong as the previous volume, but still pretty damn good and Matthew Rosenberg puts a satisfying pin in this era of the X-Men franchise before Jonathan Hickman steps in. It’s not as dark as the preceding collection, but still has plenty of wicked and chilling moments, alongside pangs of desperation. For his final arc, Rosenberg shifts towards a more hopeful tone and captures the enduring mission statement of the X-Men rather well as our ragtag collection of mutants keep on fighting against overwhelming odds in a world that hates and fears them.

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Emma, you're the most duplicitous creature I've ever encountered. Is there even a term for someone like you?
- Survivor.

[Ivan Lex · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this volume I thought the writter were ruining the previous one but as the story progresses you realize that he was just taking you to an epic X-Men story that in my opinion is very underrated. Rossenberg knows mutants well and knows how to make good stories with them.



This book is a massive mash-up of mutants, it has fights, deads, intrigues, new and old characters, and everything that it need to be a great comic. A lot of people are going to hate me for what I'm about to write but “I like this better than Hickman's Immortal X-Men"

Following the line of the previous title, Scott and Logan gather an enormous amount of soldiers to continue crossing off names of the list of mutants that was seen in the last volume, but something is very strange ... It seems that nobody remembers who the hell Emma Frost is and this is where it all gets interesting again.



Emma for her part has manipulated the webs from shadows to assemble an army of mutants to fight the government racist threat that wants to eliminate mutants with vaccines to avoid mutation at an early age.



For their part the X-Men have Dark Beast on their side to counter the vaccine, but having Dark Beast on your side is never a good idea, right?



At the end the reunion between the missing mutants and those who were still fighting on earth is imminent and this creates moments that go from the bitter to the exciting.



Rossenberg says goodbye to the title in an outstanding way, this man knows what he does and the art of Gómez, Villa and Larroca only accentuates it, the best I have read about the X-Men in a long time!!!

[AK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this run was not very comprehensible. Plus, a lot of mutants died for no reason. How disappointing.

[Alex Sarll]

Among the many things in corporate superhero comics which are difficult to explain to the uninitiated, there's the concept of 'stories that matter'. In a sense, anything which any reader enjoys, matters to them, and that's a good result for any piece of art. In another, when a franchise character is liable to be put through variations of the same paces ad infinitum, with even death only a temporary obstacle, then no story matters: whatever changes now will undoubtedly be undone sooner or later, and the most any writer can hope for is that their contribution lodges deeply enough with enough of the right people that some echo of it will show through in future generations of the palimpsest. All the same, it's an odd experience reading a fairly recent comic from just before a major, and thus far very successful, reboot – a little like dancing with phantoms. Some such stories are conscious farewells, and all the more poignant for knowing they can be an end of reader's hearts even if they can't actually finish the story – Alan Moore and Curt Swan's Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?, or Lance Parkin's The Dying Days. Others are just particularly gruelling exercises in killing both time and characters. I don't want to compare the experience of reading Matthew Rosenberg's X-Men work to slogging through Boethius' Consolations, where the only real consolation is knowing the author was brutally executed as soon as he finished; I really like some of Rosenberg's other work, even his other Marvel work, whereas to the best of my knowledge Boethius never did even a Punisher miniseries, let alone a proper run. But there is a similar joy in knowing that this joyless litany of loss and death won't last - that just like the various dark future stories it so closely resembles, it's heading straight for a great big reset button.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow, I never reviewed volume 1 - not sure how that happened, but consider this a review of both.

Ok. It's a super grimdark story, deaths right and left... At this point, it is basically an alternate universe x-book (heck, with whatever the heck is going on in Hickman's crazy reboot, what isn't at this point?). So it has a sort of been there, done that sort of thing going on. And in the grand canon scheme of things, this one just doesn't matter with all of the resurrections and craziness on the horizon. I've also had a hit or miss feeling with Rosenberg's books that I have read. But... But... It is just so good despite all of that.

Rosenberg freaking nails these characters. Scott, Logan, Emma, Sinister - they seem so completely spot on. And he brings in so many characters we haven't seen for a long time (I mean, the flipping Nasty Boys make an appearance. That's a deep cut.) It isn't light on heavy dialogue (something I struggle with in modern comics. What can I say? I dig words.) and the dialogue rings true. There are some excellent twists (even one that "fixes" a problem I had with a character in an earlier volume of his) and they don't come out of thin air.

A lot will say this story doesn't matter because of the reboot. But in that sense, do any of these stories matter?

I think this one is really well-written and that is what matters most to me.

[Blindzider · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the previous volume, this is a really dark book, thematically. The X-Men (and all mutants really) are truly at the end, more so than every before. The team struggles with surviving, what measures they should take, the hows and whys of what they are doing. Most of what you generally see in an X-Men comic (at least in the first couple decades) but compressed down to within 6-12 issues.

The problem is that stuff happens really fast, including lots of characters dying. I mean lots. Some in more creative, natural ways than others. At this pace, I step back and think much of what happens in the book is both for shock value and also knowing that the book will end soon and everything will be undone, so this story has free reign to do what it wants. The other idea is that this book sets up the X-Universe exactly where Hickman wants it to be for House of X/Powers of X, which at this time haven't read yet.

There are some interesting moments, but I think in a year or two this short run will be forgotten.

[Scratch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as single issues.

Ah, the feels. So many bad things happened. The deaths of favorite characters, combined with the earlier deaths of favorite characters from previous installments. It was just a lot. And yet, even with all the death and terrible things, there was ONE glorious moment fans have been waiting for for about 15 years. And just a tiny sliver of hope for the future.

Obviously, advertisements for House of X and Powers of X say they are going to completely revamp the X-Men status quo. You can tell, because they played fast and loose with the status quo in this run of Uncanny X-Men. Surely all these deaths can't be permanent. Right?

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read as single issues.

Ugh. Rosenberg's run just doesn't do it for me. The pacing is off, the dialogue goes nowhere, and that isn't even going into the unfortunate events that take place during this arc.

Pass.

[Ross Alon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst at least as the previous volume. Even the art sucks.

Bring on Hickman!

Seriously, if you ever considered skipping a book, it's this one.

[Julian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wordy and slow at points but a really good story overall.

[Michael Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

Content Warning: trans murder, trans panic

Apparently these issues are where Rosenberg’s run started to fall apart. It became very clear that he wanted to establish a different status quo for our mutant heroes, and no one was safe from his efforts. At least four major heroes fell in the last two issues, and many more before that. Mutants are erased, brought back, hidden, remembered, killed, you name it.

This volume starts with a now-infamous story about the death of a certain character which is presented, on panel, in terms that are a rather explicit recreation of what is known as a trans panic murder. It is shocking and tragic to see unfold, and certainly lends a level of ethos to the events on the page, but it begs the question of why that character was killed in that way, why it needed to be presented without any warning to readers, and why that type of allegory needed to be explicitly (nearly) referenced in only a death scene, when there are no trans characters in the books otherwise. Many people, much better equipped than I, have already addressed these issues at length. I encourage you to look up their reactions instead of only reading mine.

From there, the book careens through incredible amounts of plot and twists and turns. The Upstarts are back! And Marauders! And the Hellfire Club! And Sinister! And practically everyone you can think of. There are also a couple of specific physical traits that come up that started to make me think we were heading for a main universe recreation of the Age of Apocalypse. It’s all very twisty and full of betrayal and character assassination. I’m honestly sick of the way that Cyclops and Emma have been treated since Avengers Vs. X-Men, mainly after Gillen’s run.

I had a hard time following portions of this, which then made it that much harder to enjoy. Even the art was mediocre, with a jarring drop in quality during the final issue due to a fill in artist. There were many instances of characters needing to explicitly state things from the art to make them clear. For instance, a character dies, on panel, but takes the place of another character who was standing in that same spot, but you don’t really know that until someone else explicitly says that character is dead. They disappear from the page, but with no explicit confirmation of their fate at other times. It was very hard to keep track.

I did appreciate the overall message of “this is forever,” though, as well as the need to overcome hate rather than simply avoid it. It’s always a difficult message to deliver because we, the readers, know that these characters do not deserve hate. We know that they stand in for numerous minority groups in real life who similarly do not deserve hate. Yet there is still so much hate thrown at them in the comics, and so little of what is done is about remedying that fact. It makes it a difficult message to deliver. More often than not, the book is about surviving attacks motivated by hate from one source or another. I guess it does mimic the difficulty there is in real life dealing with bigots who have latched onto hateful beliefs despite evidence to the contrary and no real reason to believe those things.

Regardless, this ended up being mostly a swing and a miss for me. Even if it hadn’t all been rendered moot by the upcoming rewrite of X-Men history, it just wasn’t a great direction to take the teams. It felt like a lot of running around just to wind up at a very similar status quo.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't want to go too deep into this, as the Jonathan Hickman stuff afterwards issues the X-Men into a new era of absolute amazingness. But... this Volume is a good read nonetheless and deserves remembered for a few key things.
Highlights:
- Wolverine and Cyclops continue to grow their team while the majority of the X-Men are off in the Age of X-Man area. All is not so great though, as both Wolfsbane and Chamber both are killed. While both of those deaths are reversed by HOX/POX, there is a long stream of names in the comic that address all the previous killed X-Men that brought slight tears to my eyes.
- Emma Frost proves again that she is one of the most manipulative people EVER. First by making the X-Men forget who she is, including Cyclops!, but only so she could protect her own ass and the Hellfire Club. BUT... that ability was only a setup to facilitate one of the two things about this Volume that matters: Emma being able to make the world completely forget about mutants.
- The other thing? The return of the X-Men from Age of X-Man. AND (one of the best panels in comics that I have ever seen, but that is because of my love for them) The reunion of Cyclops and Jean Grey which has been a LONG TIME COMING...

Overall, a good ride here... but wait to read HOX/POX. That's fundamental and X-Men direction altering forever.

[Frédéric · Rating 2 out of 5]

To conclude his short lived run Rosenberg goes on a murdering spree. Impressive kill ratio; mutants fall down faster than in a Game of thrones season. My interest died nearly as fast. It screams shock value half the time, people going kamikaze for no apparent reason Havok or dying for stupid ones Wolfsbane.
All this mutant massacre is overstuffed with long dialogues served in a convoluted mind-numbing plot of no consequence since Hickman has relaunched the series. So why bother?

Art is so-so at best to boot so there's no reason to bother with this if you're nothing but a completist.

[Laissez Farrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage all the way down.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot say that I was not entertained by the whole thing.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ufa! Ainda bem que acabou essa fase enchedora de linguiça de Matthew Rosenberg nos Fabulosos X-Men. Além de ser uma fase arrastada e sem propósito, ela deu a impressão à grande parte dos leitores que a intenção original e editorial desta fase era massacrar e matar a maior parte dos mutantes isso porque - spoilers - mais tarde na fase de Jonathan Hickman seria inventado um gatilho narrativo que poderia ressuscitar sem limites todos os mutantes. Um ponto positivo neste encadernado é que por quatro edições tivemos um descanso e um respiro das artes planas e sem graça de Salvador Larroca e a arte de Carlos Magno assume, lembrando um pouco o traço de Mark Brooks, que há tempos não dá mais as caras para além das capas de quadrinhos. O grande problema das histórias deste encadernado me parece ser que o autor quer resolver muita coisa em pouco espaço e, por isso, cada edição se dá em um ritmo corrido dando a impressão de que nada realmente aconteceu. Ao mesmo tempo, com carta branca do editorial, ele poderia ter ousado mais nas histórias, em seu formato, em seu conteúdo, em tantas formas, que parece que faltou criatividade.