[Dr Kain]

Well I just completed the first Uncanny Omnibus and my god I am so impressed with this entire series right now. Chris and gang have provided some of the best comics I have ever read and I have read a ton of stuff. These may even be better than the best Spider-Man stories I have ever read, and a ton of DC stuff.

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean everything was perfect. I don't remember exactly where I last gave my insight on what I read, but there were some so-so things that occured in this batch. First, I loved that the X-Men got their asses handed to them by Magneto and never really came out on top despite stopping him for the time being.

The Savage Land stuff with Garrock was a mixed bag. I enjoyed it, but they never bothered to explain who Sauron or Garrock were, so if I had no knowledge of them before (or the animated adaptation of this story), I would have been lost. As such, even though I enjoyed it, I have to nitpick the poor writing.

The same goes for the story in Japan, sadly. I enjoyed it, but it was poorly paced and I have no idea who this Magnum guy was as I had never heard of him before. Also, who the hell is Colleen? She just appears, is suddenly in love with Cyclops, makes no mention of Jean, and they are going out with each other like nothing. But then she is never mentioned again the moment Cyke finds out Jean is still alive.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I'm not really a fan of Alpha Flight, but I would be lying if I said the two issues with them were bad. That was a really great way to introduce this team for the very first time as they made great rivals to the X-Men. Still trying to figure out why the government doesn't suddenly recognize Wolverine's resignation when they had no issue with it in Giant Sized though.

The Murderworld arc was fantastic. I highly enjoyed that and felt like the writing finally started to get back on top, especially as we entered the Proteus story. Holy ****, that was dark and intense, especially coming off just recently watching the animated version of that story. And then of course, it ends with the first three issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga that I read last month, but to have them in better quality and bigger is wonderful. In fact, I can't see myself ever reading these stories again in normal comic book size.

I do need to address the biggest poorly written story in this book though, and that was the Annual. Perez's art was great, but the rest of the story was pretty bad. Not as bad as the animated version of it where they gave Storm stockholm syndrome, but still bad enough compared to the rest of the stories. This random guy shows up, threatens to kill Jarvis because reasons, and then heads off to beat the crap out of the X-Men because he wants Storm. He teleports Storm to his world against her will but then the next time we see her, which is probably like an hour later, she is willing to sacrifice her life for this planet because... why? We don't see anything nor are told anything that makes her want to willingly help these people out. None of it makes any sense and the whole story is just bad. Then Arkon just suddenly has a compelte personality change in the last few pages, which goes against how he acted throughout the entire story and it sounds like he acted this way in his previous appearances. This story could have used another 20 pages to tell its story as it feels like an abridged version to it.

The other thing that bothers me about the whole series is how much they belittled Phoenix in the middle of it. It's like they made her so powerful they had no idea what to do with her, so they had to dumb her down. Fortunately, the writing is so good that I can easily let it slide, but I did feel the need to mention it.

Well that is it until the next volume arrives, which looks like it should be hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime, I guess I should read through my backlog of Rebirth comics.