Uncanny X-Men (in my opinion) has been on and off ever since Matt Fraction took the book on solo after #500, which has me a bit frustrated about it on the whole because he has the potential to produce some really cool stories, but he's just been missing the ball a few times recently with issues of this series.
This issue however is by far the best issue he has produced since he went solo on this title, it is without a shadow of a doubt, '
awesome' in every sense of the word.
This could perhaps be down to my personal tastes as to why I thought it was so good, but I think there is more too it than that.. you see, Fraction is bringing the X-Men into mainstream MU continuity a bit more (what with Emma's role in Dark Reign) meaning that he has a lot more to sink his teeth into when writing and writes some better stuff!
Whereas before he didn't have much to write about producing poorer issues.
Other than that, I felt this issue was great because I am a real sucker for that theme within X-Men comics which Claremont created back in the day where we get too see the other side of X-Men life, where the mutants are all just chilling at their new home and just chatting about whatever they want! I think its awesome to see that side of the mutants other than just fighting all the time (not that that inst bad obviously).
All in all, some really great stories in all the different sub-plots, all handled very well which was great too read! Some great dialogue and characterisation as well!
Pixie was written brilliantly for example, and she wasn't in it that much!
The artwork only made this more enjoyable, Dodson's artwork is outstanding!
A really brilliant issue which leads straight into Dark Reign.