As if the last year hasn’t driven the point home enough, Uncanny X-Men #500 will immediately remind you that it’s a very good time to be an X-Men fan. The writing team of Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction have brought with them their unbridled enthusiasm for the X-Men characters, and you can feel it bursting off every page. With the new satus quo now firmly established, the relocated X-Men feel like they’re enterting a new era, with a new mandate to move towards the future that the ast few years have left them unsure even existed.

The sense of gravitas that anniversary issues were afforded in the past returns with #500, as Magneto makes a brilliant, classically-inspired appearance as an evil super-villain with a dastardly plot to destroy the X-Men - but all is not as it seems, as Magneto’s facade actually disguises something far more in keeping with his current situation as the unintentional architect of the Mutant race’s downfall.

While Brubaker’s run has been mildly disappointing - hampered,nitially by the attempt to make his run a self-contained, 12-issue story, adding Fraction into the dynamic has clearly re-invigorated the writing side of things. Dodson’s artwork is great to look at (wisely, he’s given the action scenes) and even Greg Land almost manages to keep up despite his particular brand of artwork being fairly unpalettable - there are still some moments where the tracing and posing get a bit much, but largely due to the strength of the writing, and the expert tempering of any tonal shift in art, the book manages to survive unscathed. The last time the franchise looked this promising was during Morrison’s and Whedon’s early issues, but this time, tone of the book seems substantially less knowing and ironic, it pushes forword while respecting the past, rather than winking at it.

In short, Uncanny #500 is a fantastic new start and a fantastic, mostly self-contained anniversary issue featuring probably the most enjoyably old-school Magneto Vs. X-Men clash in almost a decade. There’s almost nothing to complain about. If Ellis’ clinical, acerbic take on the team didn’t enthuse you, then good luck - Uncanny X-Men might just be back to try and reclaim its crown as the line’s flagship title.

Brubaker’s epic “Death of Captain America” story has been moving smoothly over from issue to issue now since the first, fatal comic in which Cap was struck down. While the plotting has always been masterful and the twists carefully engineered, something about the story in the final part of the trilogy (The Man Who Bought America) has kept me from enjoying it too much. The 4th part, contained in Issue #40, has brought back what was missing - the gut reaction to events.

While the whole issue is mostly a tense action scene that intercuts between two Caps fighting and Sharon once again attempting her escape, the amount of character work packed in is impressive. 50s Cap is kept in a confused, righteous rage, while Bucky attempts to calm him down while doubting his own ability to do so. Meanwhile, Sharon and her hostage, Sin, debate just who is more important to the Skull, while the masterminds behind the entire scheme bicker amongst themselves. For the first time this arc, all these characters seem like 3-dimensional people rather than pieces on Brubaker’s chessboard, and I’ve started caring about the story all over again.

Epting’s art also hits a real peak with this issue, and there’s a final page reveal that looks almost as iconic in itself as Epting’s depiction of Cap’s death. The last panel gives the unusual impression of putting the reader in the Red Skull’s shoes, of all people. It’s guaranteed that you and he are thinking the same think the moment you recognise what Sin has done.

With only two issues to go before the “end” of the epic story, one has to wonder exactly what the status quo is going to be. Bucky has already started showing up as Cap outside of his title, so maybe it’s time for him to start properly interacting with the Marvel Universe - whichever direction Brubaker takes, it’s certain that it’s going to be a truly brilliant read.

After last months’ reveal of Sharon discovering a Steve Rogers-looking dude floating in a tank in the Red Skull’s hideout, it was impossible not to put the new issue right to the top of my reading pile. Luckily, Brubaker knows not to string this kind of thing out, and almost immediately gives us some advancement of that plot. Someone get this man a writer’s position on Lost.

Of course, before we find out anything about the floating Steve, we get to see a little more of what the Skull’s actually up to. Brubaker is keeping the readers and characters largely in the dark about what exactly the Skull and his group of Nazi-associated villains are up to, but by meting out small piece of information here and there, a bigger picture is starting to emerge - and from the look of it, he’s aiming to put himself in charge of both the US presidency and economy. This time, he might just have the patience to go through with it, too.

With Bucky’s career as Captain America now public, we see some fairly high-profile reactions to it. The man on the street doesn’t seem to be taking much notice, but in the hero community, there are understandably some ruffled feathers. Falcon has a bash at Stark, and then Hawkeye turns up at Bucky’s apartment to talk things out Superhero style - with a fight. Having Clint show up wearing a purple T-Shirt was a cute touch, and helped me immediately recognise the character when, let’s face it, with the blond hair and blue eyes, he could easily have looked like Steve Rogers.

Elsewhere Sharon has apparently snapped out of Faustus’ control, though she isn’t letting on just yet. While her captors prepare to unleash their version of Steve Rogers, she sneaks in for a look… and it gets a little confusing. Steve wakes up, and he seems to remember who he is, claiming “yes, Steve Rogers was my name.” but on the other hand… he appears to be a robot. Once again, Brubaker has ended on a good mystery cliffhanger, and I can’t wait to see where it’s going - which, if we’re lucky, will be revealed next issue.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it - Epting is back on art, and inking himself it seems. Anyone know what the situation is here? Are Epting and Guice sharing duties issue-to-issue? On the writing side, Brubaker has, over the last year, crafted Cap into a brilliant monthly read, and each issue brings both new answers and fresh mysteries to pursue. The emphasis on espionage over superheroics might not entertain everyone, but personally, I can’t get enough.

To this day, I remain surprised that Brubaker has made me into a Captain America fan. I swear I’ll stop mentioning it soon. This issue sees the final part of the second part in Brubaker’s “Death of” epic, entitled “The Burden of Dreams.” With Bucky now firmly in the Captain America identity, the series finally has its title character back, after a fashion. So naturally, Brubaker gives us yet another twist…

Firstly, I’m going to address the issue of the Black Widow. It’s well-documented that Secret Invasion is going to stay well out of Captain America while Brubaker tells his story. However, plenty of people in the cast are also in the cast of other books - The Widow is currently appearing in Mighty Avengers and Captain America sporting vastly different looks (one has short hair, one doesn’t). Given that the skrulls were originally a metaphor for cold-war communism, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Widow appearing in Mighty Avengers would be a good choice for an infiltrator - it could be a simple matter of continuity, as she appears to exit the cast of the title with this issue, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was more than that.

Anyway, back to the action. Brubaker is currently weaving sub-plots in an utterly masterful way. Sharon’s pregnancy is certainly an interesting one - the child of Captain America is, after all, a big deal. Meanwhile, Bucky is doing very well as the new Cap when fighting hand to hand, but he finds that the other side of Captain America - being the icon - doesn’t come so naturally as he fails to inspire anything in a small crowd of rioting civilians, something that Rogers would’ve whipped into order in seconds. Either way, Bucky’s soon going to be public as the new Cap, and that’s an exciting prospect.

Elsewhere, Sharon’s pregnancy is slowly giving her the psychological impetus to break free of the Skull’s control. As she does so, she tries to escape and in the process, stumbles across a stasis tank that appears to contain the body of… Steve Rogers. Ye gods.

There could be a million explanations for what this is, but either way, it’s one hell of a cliffhanger. The mix of pseudo-political intrigue, modern espionage and character-based drama gives the title a flavour unlike any other Marvel book, and makes it easily the best of Brubaker’s ongoing Marvel Universe comics. Worth giving a try.

Ed Brubaker’s latest Criminal TPB - Lawless - gets looked at by James, there’s some scary news about the future of Buffy Season 8, a tip about one of comics’ up-and-coming artist offering cut-price commissions, some speculation about just what’s going on with the GL Corps’ new rivals and a little more about Morrison’s Batman.

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The first X-title to come out after Messiah Complex has a lot of weight to bear in terms of setting the tone for the rest of the line in the post-crossover universe, so it’s a bit strange to see Uncanny X-Men not just ignoring, but almost contradicting large elements of Messiah Complex’s conclusion.

Firstly - it seems that Cyclops’ claim that “there are no X-Men” wasn’t quite as final as it sounded, because what’s actually happened is that the X-Men are all taking a holiday while they decide what happens next. Secondly, and rather more bafflingly, it’s made totally explicit in this issue that the X-Men don’t believe Xavier is dead and that Cyclops has sent Beast out to look for him. A strange thing to do, considering we last saw Xavier’s corpse slumped on the ground after being shot in the head (ah, but did you notice Xavier’s mysteriously disappearing body in that last panel?! No, me neither.) I suspect the cause the confusion is that the gap between the last panel of Messiah Complex and the first panel of Uncanny #495 is going to be filled in by X-Men: Legacy #208 which regrettably isn’t due out until later this month.

Those are two fairly big flaws, but it’s not like they ruin the comic. In fact, the globe-trotting structure of this issue really feels like a throwback to the X-Men’s heyday, where the characters were rarely in the same place together, and were usually investigating entirely separate plots - so we get Cyclops and Emma vacationing in the Savage Land, double-dating with Shanna and Ka-Zar while trying to decide where the X-Men go now that Xavier and his dream are no longer relevant, and we get Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler heading out to visit Russia. Meanwhile Angel turns up in San Francisco and discovers that it’s unexpectedly become the 60s, and manages to contact Cyclops for help just before he too succumbs to whatever’s going on.

What we’ve actually ended up with is a really decent issue that could slot nicely into any era of X-Men. The light-hearted road-movie feel of Logan, Kurt and Piotr pranking and brawling their way across Europe is pure 80s Claremont, in a good way. The Angel plot suggests that the other X-Men are actually going to do some genuine, non-mutant focused superheroics which hasn’t happened in years and might actually make a nice change of pace.

The thing is, as good as this issue is, after a massive crossover like Messiah Complex… it’s hardly the new direction we were promised. Perhaps it’s intentional - X-Men, Cable, X-Force, Young X-Men and X-Factor all appear to be dealing far more directly with the fallout, so perhaps Uncanny’s “place” in the X-Line is to provide a refuge from that. For now I’m just enjoying it as a nice, light X-Men story and assuming that the real meat of the post-Messiah Complex situation will be digested elsewhere.