Sinister sends clone after clone against the X-Men’s inner circle and actually manages to make some headway against them.  Hope uses Emma’s telepathy to mentally protect them, but she isn’t powerful enough to assault Sinister.  He takes a moment to inform her that her destiny is to become the Phoenix.  Things meanwhile aren’t going well for the X-Men, until Danger arrives reconstituted and destroys all of the Sinisters in the room.  There are still more outside however.  In ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #1, Emma, in diamond form, lost her arm.  Now, for the first time, she reverts to human form in order to telepathically defeat all of the Sinisters for good, with Submariner squeezing her arm to act as a tourniquet.

Of course another new iteration has already been created and has learned from his predecessor’s mistake.  He doesn’t attack, however cautions Cyclops that if he continues on his current path, he will become the most hated man in the world.

The Celestials arrive, but with the Dreaming Celestial restored, they depart.

Sinister’s plot is interesting and nicely different from Magneto’s or Apocalypse’s.  He doesn’t believe in simple evolutionary superiority and survival of the fittest.  He believes in improvement.  That said, he kind of talks too much.  Seriously this is the third issue of him yammering away.  He must deliver at least 60% of all the dialogue in this book.

There are a lot of X-Men in this book, so not everyone gets a chance to shine, but Emma, Hope and Danger get nice moments.  I have no idea how they are going to fix Emma’s arm or if she’s just going to be an amputee from now on.  At any rate, this development hasn’t been reflected in any other comics yet.  Even if they don’t get a lot of dialogue, even the background characters have a few nice beats, such as Magik’s look of concern when Storm is injured and when Colossus goes flying over her head.

Sadly, the excellent, but slow Carlos Pacheco couldn’t illustrate this entire issue.  He only draws the ending.  The two fill-in artists, Rodney Buchemi and Paco Diaz, provide nice work (I don’t know which is which unfortunately) but it doesn’t compare to Pacheco’s usual style.  Their work is great, but Pacheco has large shoes to fill. But despite that, the other two draw very well and the storytelling, facial expressions, perspective, etc. are all great!

There’s something I’m not digging, though.  Maybe it’s the coloring or inking, but for some reason this book looked too bright.  The art lacked the depth or richness I’ve noticed in other books.  That doesn’t ruin the book or anything, but it was something I noticed.

All in all, a satisfying launch for the new ‘Uncanny X-Men.’  This book has a unique tone and stars the mutant elite, differentiating itself from the other X-Books.  I very much liked this take on Sinister, verbosity and all.  I never liked the character in the past, so this was a nice shift.  Of course, it would have been nice if Carlos Pacheco had drawn the whole thing, but the fill-ins didn’t ruin it or anything.

Verdict: Buy

UNCANNY X-MEN #3
Written by Keiron Gillen
Pencils by Rodney Buchemi, Paco Diaz and Carlos Pacheco
Cover by Pacheco, Cam Smith and D’Armata