Everything seems to be fine for the X-Men since they re-localized to San Francisco. They go to football games, hang on the streets, give concerts and shop around. They even corrected a "tactical flaw" in their rank by recruiting the Canadian super-hero Northstar. But as we all know, things rarely stay like that for the team and soon they find themselves under the attack of Madelyne Pryor and her girls-only club. Add to that a coalition that wants a referendum to monitor mutant reproduction and you get a the ingredients for a dramatic finale. On a kind-of side-story, Beast has brought together a group of very brilliant scientists to determine the causes of the mutant gene disappearance and to revert it. Their next step is a trip in the past to study pre-mutant era cells. Oh yeah I almost forgot, there seems to be two Psylocke now.

The story of Uncanny X-Men #509 is what you can expect from an average super-hero comic book. The various plot thread are advancing at a relatively slow pace. You get all those stylized captions telling you who's who and you get some revelations or specific informations that only long time followers will get. The only strong point is that Matt Fraction is bringing back the feared and hatred part that always made the X-Men different from other super groups and unless I'm wrong, he also attempts to make an analogy between the referendum on mutant rights and last year real-life Californian referendum on gay marriage. I really wish I could ask him if it's the case. If it is, a more subtle approach might have worked better.

On the art side, Greg Land's photo-realistic style is interesting for super-heroes but I preferred Terry Dodson's more cartoony and lighter approach. Another problem I had with M. Land might not be entirely his fault. Everyone knows that he can draw pretty women but don't just fill a comic books with them just because he is the artist. I appreciate pretty ladies like everyone else but please can I at least have one reason as to why they are in the story.

Bottom line, your standard super-hero stuff with an artist bend on showing you every X-Women and X-Vilainess more feminine attributes.