Never before have I cared, and here we are, years after Morrison took strides to make them both “cool” and Bru ups him on that. Emma is a real woman. Not a prop. Not a jerk. A real human being with fleshed out emotions who acts on them out of love for her man and her team. She has really taken to being an X-Man and has the makings of a great leader. And when she finds out Scott enjoys being a dirty hippie, it’s actually real dialogue between two adults who love each other.

And it’s good.

We finally learn that the woman controlling the LSD-flashback into 1960s San Francisco is being controlled by another mutant (think House of M) who probably lost his powers during M-Day and wants to remember what it feels like to be back in the good old days. That’s the vibe I got at least.

Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus are on a train leaving Russia when the train stops and Wolverine realizes they’ve been set up. And the fight is ridiculous. Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus all fight what appears to be a mix between Crimson Dynamo and the newer Sentinels and the 3 massive robots get it handed to them. Until Wolverine stops too long to worry about saving Nightcrawler’s life.

But they’re friends. It makes sense. Check out Colossus’ awesome Superman dive down through one of the robots. Thank goodness Mike Choi recently signed a Marvel exclusive (with partner in crime Sonia Oback signing as well). I don’t think I’ve seen a better rendition of Piotr in recent memory, especially all glossy and shiny.

Kicker at the end: The Red Room wants to know why these three kept their powers and the Russian mutants all lost theirs. Looks like it has nothing to do with wanting Piotr back but wanting their mutant army to get reborn.

Hoo boy it’s a good book.

Thank goodness for the X-books. But was this book of the week? No? All those kind words and it wasn’t?

Final Word: Uncanny continues to be better and more advanced storytelling than Astonishing. By differentiating it from all the other X-books and giving most of them clear points in existence, it has made Uncanny the flagship book it deserves to be. With Fraction joining the team, I can only see this going up.