Uncanny X-Men #13 was impressive this week and was one of the best chapters in the Battle of the Atom crossover. There was so much crunched into the comic, I am sure it will make some reader’s heads spin. It has to snatch my Pick of the Week.
Uncanny X-Men #13
The First Challenge
The first challenge of Uncanny X-Men #13 was to take five separate X-Men factions and merge them into one story. We have two modern X-Men factions, two factions from the future, and one from the past. Granted, the number of factions continues to slowly grow, but Bendis had to make sure to cover each one in this issue and refer to their separate goals and characteristics.
The Second Challenge
The second challenge of Uncanny X-Men #13 was that it had to tie in all of the chapters happening so far. While there have been title crossovers to this point in the Battle of the Atom series, they still held independence. All New X-Men was going in one direction while X-Men was going in a slightly different direction while Wolverine and the X-Men was going in another slight. Uncanny X-Men #13 was used to tie all of these directions together to lead up to the final two chapters in Wolverine & The X-Men #37 and X-Men: Battle of the Atom #2. My guess is that there will not be any tangent directions from here on out in the story.
The Result?
The result is a head-spinning run through the story where you have to pay close attention to everything being said and everything in the pictures. The story curves presented in Uncanny X-Men #13 could have been told over three or four issues, but was edited down to fit into one. You might have to read it twice to make sure you got everything the first time around. While this (story crunching) is a dangerous move in comics, I think Bendis pulled it off with flying colors.
