It’s the final battle between X-Man and the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #10, by writers Ed Brisson, Kelly Thompson, and Matthew Rosenberg, artist Pete Perez, colorist Rachel Rosenberg, and letterer Joe Caramagna. The last nine issues have been building up to this one and it ends with a bang. Unfortunately, a bang isn’t always good and this one isn’t exactly great.

The combined forces of the X-Men and their friends battle X-Man and his Horsemen of Salvation. Storm, mind controlled to become a Horseman, is wreaking havok on the team until Psylocke is able to break X-Man’s control over her. The rest of of the telepaths are able to separate Legion and X-Man, also severing X-Man’s control over the rest of Horsemen, but Jean is pulled into X-Man’s mind. She tries to talk him out of his quest, but he explodes with power and just like that, it’s over. But at what cost?

The biggest takeaway from this one is the ending. This story is called X-Men: Disassembled and so far, it hasn’t really lived up to that name. This issue definitely delivers on that front, but it sort of feels same old, same old. Marvel has been doing the kind of things this ending does to the X-Men since House Of M and it really didn’t work that well back then. It’s not exactly the same thing as “No More Mutants”, but it’s very similar. This doesn’t feel like the right direction for the X-Men, but it remains to be seen how things will play out. The new team line-up has already been released and Matthew Rosenberg was able to redeem Astonishing X-Men, so it remains to be seen how it will all play out.

Another nitpick on this issue, and the entire story arc in general, is how little it actually did with most of the characters. Sure, it highlighted the young X-Men, which was nice for a change, but as for the older ones, it was mostly the Jean Grey and Psylocke show. This issue brought even more characters as muscle against X-Man and his Horsemen and while they looked cool in the big battle scenes, they didn’t have much impact on the overall story. This book was already under utilizing characters and to bring more and barely use them is strange. For context, Apocalypse’s “help” barely contributed anything. Apocalypse is one of the most powerful mutants on Earth and he was a non entity in the fight.

Pere Perez has been the MVP of this book’s art team and this issue is no exception. He draws a great double page splash of the battle that really sets the tone for the rest of the book. His character work is top notch. The only tiny nitpick is he’s not very good at drawing Archangel’s wings, but other than that, everything is great. As with every issue, Rachel Rosenberg’s colors really make the whole thing pop. She’s long been the book’s secret weapon and she keeps that up in this one.

Uncanny X-Men #10 is a strange beast. It’s a good book with a shocking conclusion and great art, but that conclusion feels so cliche for an X-book by this point that it’s not very special for long time fans. The book also doesn’t really use it’s too large roster effectively. This issue is emblematic of all the good and bad things this story has done so far. It’s not bad, it’s just extremely by the numbers. This story arc has had a lot of ups and downs quality wise and this one lands somewhere in the middle: not bad, not great, but kind of average.

Grade: C+