Uncanny X-Men #500

This is a tough one. 

Ok... lets clear this up.  Its an anniversary issue and a supposed jumping on point.  It at least accomplished the latter because I feel like any new reader would be just as confused as I was while reading this.  I didn't hate this issue by any means, but I definitely wasn't wowed by anything that this issue was trying to accomplish.

I get that the X-men are going green.  I guess it makes sense.  A crazy modern art guy decides to use decommissioned sentinels to celebrate mutants... ok.  Fine, Brubaker and Fraction, I'll give you that one.  Magneto's power suit being made by the high evolutionary while a crazy film director who's using Blob as his star messes with the Sleeping Celestial... That's where I draw the line.  This story has way too much going on for its own good, and none of it really makes sense.  I can't totally judge the story just yet, because the next couple issues could clear it up a bit, but this arc is going to need to become much more focused before I start to really enjoy it. 

I didn't even get to mention the Cannonball appearance.  I know I only read the first issue of Young X-men (which I pretty much loathed) but wasn't he kinda part of the new Hellfire club?  Maybe someone else can clear that one up for me.

The last scene bothered me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.  Maybe it was someone enjoying Dazzler's music, maybe it was not being able to figure out who the black-haired kid with Pixie was, or maybe it was the weird nanotech powers of Trask that are so far unexplained (as far as I know.)  There's a chance it might have just been the last minute appearence of a certain cult.  I really don't know. 

Land's art just doesn't do it for me. It's just sort-of odd.  It looks so artificial.

I'm still excited to have these writers on this book, and think they can do great things if they focus a little better on one or two stories at a time instead of trying to cram this much into one issue.  Hopefully, things go uphill from here.