365 ONE YEAR OF REVIEWS Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #200 ... Marvel ...

Woooooowiiieee this is our 365th review and this means we have a year's worth of issues ... well the actual time period is slightly more than a year ... as in the past, we were not regular but now we would post a bunch of review in batch format ... and merely set it forward on a daily basis kind of like how real magazines are done and the dates are usually in the future! Hehehe!

And for this 365th we have to choose a comic that is not only special for its time but for us. X-Men 200th was great on several reasons and here are the reasons:

1. It's a celebration issue with double sized story telling. I remembered the ads and reviews saying that to get the location and all that correct, some of the Marvel crew even travelled to Paris!

2. It's a celebration issue that the young me managed to snag from the newsagent instead of via back issue bins similar to Hulk 300. So it's a big deal

3. At that time, X-Men had been consistently on top of the comic charts beating out current champs the Avengers and perennial competitors DC

And with all that, penciller JR JR is coming into his own with his stylized lines although I have to admit that it didn't work that well here because the scenes are usually in bright broad daylight. So nothing much for JR to lay his lines on

Anyway, as the story indicates, by this time, Magneto was on his first big reform as a good guy (current readers will think this is no big deal) ... because at that time, Magneto had never been a good guy until after the Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars where he returned and stayed with the X-Men helping out with the NMutants though not many will agree to his presence

Here, finally, the good guys in the form of Freedom Force (ex-Brotherhood of Mutants) caught up with him (and he surrendered) ... and he decided he wanted to be shown another side of him ... he wanted to be able to have a good platform for his voice and reasoning to be heard. So the court case will be moved to Paris with an international panel of jury to hear him out. Naturally being such a high profile case, the court room and outside are full of tension ...

And in the midst of all these, as Magneto and those within make their grand speeches to which we as readers are privy too ... outside to ensure we have a chance for some action we get to see new villains Fenris, pair of twins, coming making their plans to attack the court case

SPOILER ALERT

Though we are given the motives of the twins' attack, it never sounded convincing. Their subsequent appearance in the mutant world is much better and showed us just how callous and nasty these 2 can be but here ... feels flat

SPOILER ALERT

The ending is touching when all came tumbling down and that final speech between Xavier and Magnus? Solid!

Ratings: 8/10 (could be higher with different artist)