Comics: Uncanny X-Men #242

UNCANNY X-MEN #242
March 1989
"Burn!"
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco

Wow, if ever there was a doubt about Marc Silvestri's artistic talent, that opening page shatters all of them. The closeup image of Wolverine kissing Jean Grey passionately has become quite iconic, and it makes for a doozy of an opening page. And then...there's the rest of this issue. This giant-size issue. Way too many pages are spent with the X-Men fighting X-Factor for...really no reason. Sure the X-Men are sorta under demonic control, but that doesn't seem to bother Storm whenever she's reunited with Jean Grey. And then everything is back to normal and both teams join up to defeat N'astirh. It's kinda ludicrous and I really could have done without all of it. Yeah the fanboys want to see the two teams fight, but when there isn't really any motivation besides petty name-calling and there's no resolution besides saying "hey, let's not fight," it's just silly. There are some cool moments during the fight to defeat N'astirh, like Iceman creating a slide to hurl a falling Colossus directly at N'astirh. The art is pretty great throughout, I just with this was a normal-sized issue with a lot less ridiculous in-fighting.

MY SCORE: 8.2/10