All the X-books are rebooting and the first one, Uncanny, is no exception. So this is a “big” story, and therefore has a “big” spread cover and starts with a two-page spread as well, with the Sentinels killing some Reavers and Hellions, and also killing Donald Pierce, once and for all.
Then, the X-Men go to visit the Hellfire Club, where Emma Frost tells them that someone is killing her Hellion students. Actually, Emma doesn’t so much as tell them as she gets possessed by Jean Grey…
The killers are a new group we haven’t seen before, and the killing seems to be a game to them. And Shinobi Shaw is part of it. His group of Hellfire Club “Upstarts” are competing with this guy:
The dude above is Trevor Fitzroy. He is teamed up with a teleporter named Bantam. He’s also a time-traveler, using future tech to play the game.
The game is run by a guy named “Gamesmaster” who is the referee for Shinobi and Fitzroy’s competition.
The woman in the foreground is Selene. So, lots of Hellfire Club backstabbing going on.
It turns out, mutant life-forces are the fuel for Fitzroy’s time travel, and so killing them enables him to bring more people from the future into our time, so Fitzroy can expand his power base. One of these guys is…
Bishop.
He’ll be a major character, of course, even if Fitzroy will be gone in about a year. He’s a mutant-from-the-future, but he knows and admires the X-Men.
He’s kind of a fanboy, even.
All the future mutants have the letter “M” on their faces, which is helpful because the cast of characters is beyond unwieldy and confusing.
It turns out that Xavier’s legacy lives on in the future, as mutants form the XSE organization (Xavier Security Enforcers), and Fitzroy is an anti-mutant guy trying to bring the forces back in time to squash their dominance in the future.
At least I think that’s the narrative. Again, there’s so much chaos and fighting going on and so many characters that it’s really hard to follow the story.
Along the way, Colossus rejoins the team.
And we meet his brother, Mikhail, for the first time.
Some of the X-Men get shunted to another dimension.
Colossus’ brother comes across them.
He’s been living there, and now he’ll be part of the X-books. For really no good reason at all.
Sunfire gets a new costume.
I can think of no good reason for this. The outfit is generic, and we’ve already got way too many mutants running around with similar physiques and costumes.
These issues are completely chaotic and feel busy for the sake of being busy. I know a lot of people love the 1990s X-books, but for me this is the end of the X-Men for a while.