Uncanny X-Men #498

Divided part four of five.

S'alright issue I suppose. Mostly just action as Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler escape from this Red Room place in the middle of Russia. Pretty cool stuff as this general fellow tortures Wolverine to get information of Colossus concering the events of M-Day (The event at the end of House of M that depowered all but 198 of the world's mutants). They move on to Nightcrawler and start with his torture when he affects a clever escape. From there it's Wolverine literally ripping and tearing his way through armed guards (kudos to Mike Choi for knocking this out of the ballpark this issue). However, an appearance by Omega Red stops them dead in their tracks. That story, of course, is to be finished in the next issue.

As for Cyclops and Emma Frost, they're still tooling around San Fransisco wondering what the hell is up with the sudden city wide 60s flashback. There's a bit of origin telling on the telepath affecting the city, which was actually pretty cool. A couple of hippies find her freaking out on a sidewalk before she suddenly starts tapping into their minds and allowing them to live their utopian hippy dream world. Some cool stuff as Brubaker describes the general aura of good feelings surrounding the newly hippified. Basically, the modern Cindy Sheehan/Barack Obama/anti-war left are reeeaaaallllyyyy lovin' it. HAH! Brubaker spends litlte time with this story until the end where we see Cyclops and Frost ready to have a showdown with...their fellow X-Men! Hippified! Ecs-Men! HAHAHA!

Overall, the issue is so-so. I suppose you can have a bit of fun with it, but having two completely different stories being told in one arc means that not enough attention can be paid to either. The Russian story could be told in two, three issues tops. The San Fransisco story, apparently the X-Men are gonna be setting up shop there in issue #500, could be probably be elaborated on greatly and maybe stretched to four issues. Plus with the continuity issues between this and X-Force, we have sweet fuck all clue as to what stories take place when. Best not to think about it I suppose.

By the way, the cover Marvel has listed on their site as #498 is actually #499 and the cover to #498 is listed as #499.