We left off Uncanny X-Men #8 with Gold Balls having been dropped off at his parents and the latest agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Dazzler, stopping by to question him.

I’m going to warn you right now, this entire issue revolves around everyone hating Dazzler. Having just returned from an inter-dimensional Universe saving mission and having missed the events of ‘Avengers vs. X-Men’ you’d think she could catch a break? Yeah, not so much.

She starts off where the last issue ended, in the house of Gold Balls. We get a mixed response from his family as his mother is a huge fan of her music career while his father? He’s slowly losing it about his son being a mutant. He finally pulls a gun on her which causes Dazzler to use her powers as the equivalent of a flash bang to knock everyone out.

When Gold Balls comes to he’s in a holding cell and being questioned by Dazzler. He’s not being too forthcoming with answers even though she’s making a very straight case on why she needs to track down the X-Men. His take though is that Cyclops’ X-Men saved him.

They aren’t done saving him either. As the agents are thinking about it, they realize the X-Men have a way to track down Gold Balls and right as they do, I’ll give you one guess who pops up, the full team of new X-Men. They get Gold Balls out of the cell and he wants to rejoin them after he’s been forcefully questioned.

The best part of the issue, though, is when Dazzler interacts with the elder X-men from this team. She’s known and fought along each of them and while she argues that they should turn themselves in to sort this mess out, their argument is that she is being a traitor to her race and a disappointment to them all.

When Scott assumes she will join them, her response is a single question: ” What happened with Charles Xavier?” This clearly leads into her staying and them leaving. Before they do leave, they take down the Helicarrier.

The scene ends with Agent Coulson popping up to debrief her. He offers her a drink that ends up knocking her out and the last thing we see is Coulson shifting to Mystique shifting to Dazzler.

So in this issue she had a gun pulled on her, a teenager give her no respect, her ex-friends calling her an Uncle Tom, locking her up, and finally Mystique knocking her out to do God knows what. Yes, It’s been a bad day to be Dazzler and it’s only going to get worse with whatever mischief she’s up to.

That’s not all that happened though! We briefly took a look at the actual X-Men themselves and there were a couple of big changes, mainly with the Stepford Cuckoos. Once of them has cut her hair short and dyed it to impress one of the new students. Their individually is finally starting to shine through and can only lead to even larger changes for the sisters.

It was a nice break from the mess the Uncanny X-Men are in with all of their heavy hitters having issues with their abilities. I know it was a necessary focus for the story, but I’m more interested in what the ex-heroes are trying to do to recover than whatever this side story is building to.

At least so far. This was my least favorite issue of the series to date and only because it felt more like a filler issue that we didn’t really need.

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UNCANNY X-MEN #9
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Chris Bachalo