UNCANNY X-MEN #511
Writer: Matt Fraction
Penciler: Greg Land
Publisher: Marvel

In this issue, Matt Fraction concludes the story of the Sisterhood, though he and Ed Brubaker had been planting the seeds for this story since Uncanny X-Men #499. I believe that in the beginning, Brubaker and Fraction (with Fraction going solo since #504) had no real plan for the Sisterhood. I think they intended to create a team of female villains, but Fraction wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them until he wrote “Sisterhood” proper. That, my friends, led to quite a few inconsistencies, plot holes, and a rushed ending that didn’t explain nearly as much as it should have.

To recap, this all started back in issue #499, when Cyclops’ deceased ex-wife (and Cable’s mother) Madelyne Pryor began to assemble her Sisterhood of Mutants. She started with Mastermind (Martinque, daughter of the original Mastermind), then recruited a mercenary named Chimera, Spiral from the Mojoverse, and Mastermind’s sister Lady Mastermind. With Spiral, the Sisterhood also gained an android Spiral had been creating to resemble Lady Deathstrike.

Before beginning her master plan, Madelyne first dubbed herself the Red Queen, and recruited a horny mutant in his early 20’s named Empath to create an anti-mutant gang known as the Hellfire Cult. Because who needs loyalty to one’s own endangered people when a hot redhead is giving you kinky S&M sex in a dirty warehouse? The X-Men quickly shut the Hellfire Cult down after their nefarious plot to sneak up behind Pixie with a baseball bat, and Madelyne went back to her Sisterhood.

And so Madelyne begins her ultimate goal: to get her body back. It turns out Madelyne is just a psychic ghost with no physical presence, and she needs to inhabit a body strong enough to contain her vast power. Because Madelyne is literally a clone of Jean Grey, she’s going to need at least a piece of Jean to do it. To test out whether Madelyne can simply jump into a dead body equal to her own, the Sisterhood exhumed the corpse of Psylocke’s original Englishwoman body, kidnapped Psylocke herself from the depths of the multiverse, and tested to see if they could shove Psylocke’s mind into her own dead body. It worked, and Madelyne placed a spell on the newly restored British Psylocke to keep her as a slave. The Sisterhood then launched a surprise late night attack on the X-Men’s base in the Marin Headlands, and raided Wolverine’s bedroom for a lock of Jean Grey-Summers’ hair that he’d been keeping.

And that (finally) brings us to my review of #511.

Holy shit, Dazzler’s doing something!

This issue begins with some of the X-Men in the blackbird, en route to Westchester. During Cyclops’ narration, he seems to be aware that Madelyne is a psychic ghost. How he figured it out, I have no idea. Cyclops also knows that Madelyne is going to use the lock of Jean’s hair to locate Jean’s corpse, and use the body as a host. Jean’s body is, of course, buried in Westchester. At the Sisterhood’s apartment hideout in San Francisco, Madelyne is still casting a spell to locate Jean’s body, when the women of the X-Men raid their apartment. A massive girl-fight ensues, but Madelyne completes her location spell, and she, Spiral, Chimera, and the copy of Deathstrike open a portal to the graveyard behind what was once Charles Xavier’s mansion. This happens just as the other X-Men arrive in the blackbird, and Domino is already standing over Jean’s dug up grave. A fight ensues near the graveyard as well.

Several things about this graveyard fight scene were ridiculous. There were literally two sequential pages of every single character saying no more and no less than one word at a time. Then you have Domino firing two guns throughout the fight, and apparently not landing a single bullet on anything. Finally, there’s the oh-so glorious confrontation between Cyclops and Madelyne that kicks off with Cyclops firing an optic blast at her crotch. Because if you’ll remember, Cyclops has always resented Madelyne for giving birth to Cable and cramping his style with a family.

Right in the baby-maker!

Madelyne taunts Cyclops as she pulls a casket out of Jean’s open grave, and attempts to possess the redhaired corpse inside. It turns out the body inside Jean’s grave was someone else’s, placed there by Domino just moments ago per Cyclops’ instructions. When she attempts to possess the body too weak to contain her, Madelyne’s psychic ghost is defeated and destroyed. Back in San Francisco, the X-Women battle the remaining members of the Sisterhood. Dazzler confronts the brainwashed Psylocke, and (finally doing something after 10 issues) brutally knocks just enough sense into Psylocke to make her fight the magical brainwashing. With that, Psylocke reverted back into Kwannon’s body, back to her normal self.

This issue wraps up with Beast sneaking into Scott and Emma’s bedroom late at night, informing them that he’s well aware of the secrets they’ve each been hiding (Scott’s X-Force assassin squad, and Emma working with Norman Osborn), and that he’s taking the X-Club on a mission so they won’t be involved in the fallout.

Use. Sentences.

You’re probably wondering “where are these inconsistencies and plot holes you mentioned earlier?” I’m going to answer that question with a series of questions:
1. Why was Madelyne Pryor evil? When I say she’s evil, I mean she recruited a team of killers and supervillains into her Sisterhood, and nearly killed Colossus and Nightcrawler over a lock of hair. You might be thinking “wasn’t she evil before?” but that was back during the Inferno storyline, where she was under demonic influence. Prior to demons turning her into Goblin Queen, Madelyne was a nice person with latent psychic powers. When she reappeared during the 90’s as a companion to X-Man, Madelyne may have still been violently bitter at Jean Grey for stealing her husband, but had otherwise shaken off her demonic powers and become a good person again. There was no explanation as to why Madelyne showed up evil in this storyline.
2. Why even bother with the Hellfire Cult? The Hellfire Cult had nothing to do with her goal to get her body back/Jean’s body. There was nothing to achieve in generating anti-mutant hysteria in San Francisco. It’s like Madelyne was evil for the sake of being evil, again with no explanation.
3. How did Madelyne even come back at all? The last time she had the energy to show up as a psychic ghost, she was practically powerless. I could hazard a guess, sure, but stuff like that really should’ve been explained somewhere over these past 12 issues.
4. How did Madelyne even know that Logan kept a lock of Jean’s hair?
5. How did Cyclops know that Psylocke was transferred back into her old reanimated body, that Madelyne was a bodyless psychic ghost, and that Madelyne stole the lock of hair to track down Jean’s corpse?
6. How did Madelyne’s spell lead her to Westchester? Jean’s body isn’t even there. It disappeared (presumably into the White Hot Room) at the end of Phoenix Endsong.
7. How did Madelyne even find Psylocke?

This entire plot was poorly conceived, and even more poorly executed. Characters acted with no motivations. Others knew things they had no business knowing simply so the story would progress faster. Things happened with no explanation given as to how. It’s like Brubaker and Fraction were sitting down one day and said “Hey, what if Cyclops’ ex-wife came back from the dead as a bad guy?” They then proceeded to shove her into a couple of scenes with menacing dialogue without any plans for her beyond leading a Sisterhood of Mutants. Then when Brubaker left the title, Fraction realized he needed to wrap up that little subplot before moving on to his Dark Reign crossover, and phoned it in. This is so unbelievably below Fraction’s usual standards that my overwhelming sense of disappointment is shadowed only by my frustration. I honestly question how Fraction could’ve turned in the four scripts to “Sisterhood” with a sense accomplishment. This storyline was nothing to be proud of, and was the biggest waste of time this title has seen sense the ending to “The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire” (though “Sisterhood” had the common decency to end).