Uncanny X-Men #17-22: We Have Always Been

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN

Written by Matthew Rosenberg
Penciled by Salvador Larocca, Carlos Gomez and Carlos Villa
Published May-July 2019

   Wolfsbane is dead. Mourned by most of the remaining X-Men, burn sworn to avenge her, Wolverine and Kwannon head out to murder the bigoted humans who killed her. Before they get the chance though, O.N.E. shows up interrupts their revenge mission. Back at Harry's bar, Juggernaut makes an interesting discovery - Emma Frost isn't on Cyclops' revenge list - but why?

   After a mission to fight the Marauders for some reason, the X-Men whisk through one of Illyana's portals to find the bar in flames. There Mr. Sinister is waiting, but gives up a little too easily. Meanwhile Karma and Mirage debate quitting the team again while Cyclops gives a call to the lady who made so much of his previous life a living hell.

   In the interim, we learn how General Callahan and his Office of National Emergency has Emma Frost under their control. In fact, she was the one who told Wolverine that Cyclops was still alive, but now Callahan knows of his reemergence as well.

   Meanwhile, several kids are turning up dead from a mutant vaccine spreading around the world while Wolverine goes after Emma Frost. Reason being - Dark Beast convinced Cyclops he could make a vaccine to reverse engineer the mutant sterilizing gene... I think. To be honest, I don't really understand what's happening in the story now... Callahan imprisons Emma Frost while Magick kills Dark Beast. Suddenly the White Queen calls to Scott and reminds him just who she is.

   They run to her to find out just what exactly going on.. which is really what I'd like to know as well. Turns out it was all a ruse to trap all of them. Callahan sends some super huge sentinel to attack them while Magick sends them all to limbo on accident. Inside the hellish wasteland, they fight a demon who eventually kills Banshee and Juggernaut. But it's all ok because at the end of it all, Emma Frost makes the entire universe forget mutants ever existed. And just like that, all the wars are over.

   The story begins to conclude in central park. Scott and Havok discuss living in a world where there's finally peace. Wolverine wakes up from a coma and tries to kill Mr Sinister but is then reminded that he was knocked out and everything is ok now. Only problem is that Callahan has one more ace up his sleeve. He sends the last of his super sentinels to attack the mansion but Havok decides to blow himself up to save the day.

   It apparently does nothing. But the Warlock/Jamie Madrox hybrid recognizes them all as mutated parts of him. He attempts to reclaim them and blows himself up in the process. It ends up turning them all off for a second, and the X-Men are able to attack them care of hundreds of Multiple Man clones. Furthermore, all their teamates they thought dead suddenly return, and in 5 pages are able to stop the fight.  With that, the X-Men are back but very thankfully this story comes to a merciful ending.

   Wow. So I don't really know what to say. This story had a lot of potential, but in the end ran into such a confusing smashup of plot twists and artist substitutions that I couldn't figure out what was going on. It's like Marvel told Matt Rosenberg that he could do anything he wanted, let himi come up with some elaborate story but then said "Wait, nevermind. You have to wrap it all up in one issue..". It was poorly finished, turned into a mess of artwork, and didn't end up making a lot of sense. I liked where they were going but don't like how they ended.. and for that, I give this story a 5/10.

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