After the focus on one of the newer Uncanny X-Men in the last issue, Benjamin Deen, we get to see a bit of a girls night out in this one. Of course, nothing can go simple so a touch of ‘Inhumanity’ was added into the issue just to get the crossover in for what it’s worth. Thankfully, while the crossover is a requirement in Marvel these days, it didn’t feel forced and it even addressed a question I had myself!

First, though, let’s get down to the fun part of things. The ‘Uncanny X-Men’ have been through a lot recently. There are a slew of new students and the X-Men themselves have messed up power sets. With all that has been going on, there hasn’t been a whole lot of downtime or recreation for the students who follow Cyclops. Even learning is fun at Wolverine’s school, so this issue gave us a much needed downtime, at least for the women on the team. Of course, the X-Men can’t just have downtime without being interrupted.

The issue starts off with the Cuckoos and Tempus asking Magik to take them shopping. While she hesitates at first, she ends up agreeing but first says they need to bring a few others with them. Jean Grey gets dragged into it as well as Emma Frost (they need some shopping money and she was the White Queen of The Hellfire Club as she so snarkily points out.) Jean demands Kitty come along and it’s field trip time. The entire build up alone is priceless based just around Emma. While I partially felt like her sleeping habbit was drawn out of a manga or anime, it seemed fitting with the evolution of her character. In fact, the art style of the entire book felt perfect, not just Emma. Though, once upon a time she probably would have been falling asleep with latex and garters, these days she’s dressed in shorts and a tank top. Oddly enough, while she still smacks of sex appeal she has more and more grown out of that stage of her life. Just don’t tell that to her current uniform choice.

As the ladies head out for shopping, food and a little internal strife, out of the blue there are sirens going somewhere down the street. Some mass mind reading by all of the psychics allow them to find out about the Terrigen Mists and they run into someone who is in a cocoon. But it’s not a really a cocoon but the fastest transformation so far of an Inhuman. While an interruption to the day off was needed (let’s be honest they never really get a day off at this point), it did seem a bit forced.

That being the case, as I mentioned above, once the event ended, the women brought up a few interesting questions. With the Inhumans on Earth, will Mutants feel less of the racism they currently deal with? How will humanity tell themselves from the mutants from the Inhumans?

These are really valid and as Marvel slowly pushes the Inhumans onto us all (in order to eventually turn them into movies since they can’t use the X-Men.) While I didn’t like the tie-in, I liked everything leading up to it and the questions it brought up. I really enjoyed the interaction between the women here which felt natural and the downtime really was needed. The girls night out was great. The bonding and bickering felt like something that was long overdue, though, it kind of makes you wonder what the guys were up during this issue. I can see them all just sitting around eating sandwiches and one of them asking Cyclops, possibly his younger self, something along the lines of “So you and Emma used to date right?

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UNCANNY X-MEN #15
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Kristafer Anka