Uncanny X-Men 15, Cable and X-Force 17

Uncanny X-Men 15
Bendis (w) and Anka (a) and Beredo (c)

The girls of the New Xavier School have realized that they don't have much by way of clothes or entertainment or whatever else they might need and so convince their female professors to take them shopping. Emma is excited about it and provides the needed money while Ilyana and Kitty are ambivalent but willing to go anyway. They go to London and shop and buy clothes and talk for a while until sirens interrupt a meal. They follow the sirens to find cocoons popping up all over the city and the telepaths, scanning the mind of anyone they can reach, hear about the Terrigenesis bomb. They go to one of the nearby cocoons which has a transforming Latverian in it who comes out and, after a brief talk with the X-Men, knocks them all unconscious without trying. AIM shows up right after and takes the boy into their custody, excited that he seems to be able to take out a fleet of X-Men without even trying. The women eventually wake up and they leave the scene, realizing that the world is about to get more complicated.

An INHUMANITY tie-in here and one that, I suppose, helps illustrate this new event and shows us that Cyclops' team is aware of what's happening but doesn't do a ton else. There's a lot of dialogue here, as is typical in a Bendis book, but most of it doesn't really delve deeper into character than we've already been. Celeste doesn't like Jean and Jean doesn't really like that Celeste doesn't like Jean because of what she could become and Celeste actually doesn't like Jean because she shouldn't be in this time and so on and so forth. Beyond that, not much more is discussed beyond the women's desire to go shopping and some defensive lines from Bendis about how it's not sexist, they just like to go shopping is all. There's a lot of the back-and-forth dialogue that, again, serves to slow the book a lot while making every character sound the same and somehow, spectacularly, not adding anything to the book's story. Kris Anka picks up the art on this one and it's definitely the highlight of the issue. Anka's done good work on UNCANNY X-FORCE covers this run and he's done pretty killer character and costume design work recently (he also works on the excellent new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show on Nickelodeon so I've nothing but praise for him). Overall, the story is one you're probably reading everywhere else across the Marvel Universe right now and it's done better elsewhere and, if you're reading UNCANNY X-MEN, you won't get much new out of this one unless, I suppose, these new clothes take a front seat in the next arc?

Cable and X-Force 17
Hopeless (w) and Sandoval (a) and Rosenberg (c)

The Adversary is on the loose in the X-Force bunker and Forge and Doctor Nemesis are trapped in Forge's mind while he uses Forge's body. Forge realizes that he hasn't left the bunker yet because he can't; the Adversary's incredible magic powers don't work on cold metal, such as the steel the bunker is entirely made out of (seems arbitrary). The key, then, is to keep him in there and to get Doc's consciousness out of Forge's body and have Doc kill Forge to stop the Adversary getting loose in the world. Doc refuses but Forge insists and both try to contact Boom Boom to stop her blowing holes in the bunker and to get her to get Doc out with the mind sync in the lab. Meanwhile, Domino and Colossus stop the avalanche hitting the small town below with a bit of luck and some ingenuity while Cable and Hope have worse luck against the Reavers and their Reavertron 9, made up of the lower level Reavers in the area. After a bit of fighting and some impressive fortitude on both their parts, Hope destroys the Reavertron and takes down the higher ranking Reavers and Cable carries her exhausted body out. Back at the bunker, Boom Boom manages to reach the switch, sending Doc's and Forge's consciousnesses into Doc's mind but, with the mind sync grabbing all nearby consciousnesses, it also sends the Adversary to Doc. Forge is annoyed that it seems impossible to save any of them but Doc points out that not all minds are created equal and he uses the tools in his own mindscape to indefinitely trap the Adversary, eager to hold his victory over Forge for long to come.

Nice little issue as everything here wraps up pretty cleanly and rather abruptly. Domino and Colossus get their moment together as they get to go on their date night after successfully working together to save the town and detonate the Sentinel. Cable and Hope get a bit of bonding time and Hope gets to prove herself to her father. Doc and Forge share a nice moment when Doc reveals that his plan of entering Forge's mind was a little short-sighted and he didn't have time to plan an exit strategy, too concerned was he in saving his reluctant friend's life. I'm also in favor of this issue because we get a lot of Doc Nemesis and we get to see him pretty much win outright in his constant battle of wits with Forge. Nice issue and a nice conclusion, in a way, to the series. There are still a few more issues before this book and UNCANNY X-FORCE disappear and get replaced by Si Spurrier's X-FORCE early in 2014 but the next few issues will be the crossover series VENDETTA between the two X-Force books and will therefore not exactly be based around the mission statement of this team (or of the other team but that one has less of a mission statement and more of a "we banded together because we had to in order to stop this crazy threat") so it's like the series is ending here, in a way. Bit sad. It does make me wonder how long in advance Hopeless knew about the replacement of this book, especially considering how abrupt the finale of this little arc was, wrapping things up in a hastily tied bow. Oh well, it all works out well and Sandoval's art really fits the sort of chaotic action we see throughout the issue. Nicely done all the same.