- Written by: Gail Simone
- Art by: Luciano Vecchio
- Colors by: Rachelle Rosenberg
- Letters by: VC’s Clayton Cowles
- Cover art by: David Marquez, Matthew Wilson
- Cover price: $4.99
- Release date: July 23, 2025
Uncanny X-Men #18, published by Marvel in September 2025, drops the X-Men in the heart of New Orleans for a so-called “Mutant Appreciation Day,” aka Friendship Fest, and a burning dose of local bigotry.
First Impressions
If comics are supposed to make you feel something, Uncanny X-Men #18 left me asking, “Is that it?” Instead of depth, this issue serves up a heap of setups and empty calories with zero character development.
Plot Analysis
The story opens with a creepy nightmare sequence: young Outlier Becca is tormented by a dream (or is it real?) about “Murder Me, Mutina,” leaving her traumatized and her friends none the wiser. The X-Men, serving as mutant mentors in the Bayou, try unsuccessfully to comfort her during her subsequent sleepwalk around the house, but the emotional moment never really lands beyond vague sadness. The team soon turns their focus outward, discussing whether or not they should participate in New Orleans’ first-ever Friendship Festival, with promises of corn dogs, local bands, and mutant-friendly festivities. Mutant acceptance? Sounds good on paper.
When mutant anxiety mixes with mundane event logistics, Nightcrawler visits organizer Mackenzie Deneer, who explains she arranged the festival to thank the X-Men for saving her daughter. The fest itself quickly becomes a media circus, with the team awkwardly dodging selfie requests, nosy strangers, and more shallow optimism than genuine tension. There’s chatter about mutant safety, but none of it translates into a real threat—just a slow walk through generic party scenes.
Of course, what would a public mutant event be without disaster lurking nearby? Wolverine and Gambit sniff out trouble that explodes into action when they discover a hospital fire set by bigots (maybe?) who might be connected to the Friends of Humanity. The X-Men, joined by Cyclops and an assortment of mutants, throw themselves into an evacuation that plays out as a checklist of heroic acts, but not even falling rubble can raise the stakes above paint-by-numbers peril.
Finally, Rogue barely escapes with her life, only for applause to greet the survivors outside, and a quick reminder that the saboteur is still at large. The threat is left dangling for another issue, and so is any sense that the Outliers are actual people, instead of comic props. The issue promises more to come but delivers less than what’s here.
Story: Plot and Structure
Uncanny X-Men #18 desperately wants to juggle “slice of life” mutant drama and superhero action, but instead lands somewhere between bland sitcom and after-school special. Most scenes are padded with exposition or the kind of dialogue that sounds meaningful at first but reveals nothing. All of the Outliers—the young mutant trainees who should be breathing life into this arc—remain faceless, given less agency than the corn dog vendors. The absence of meaningful conflict means stakes are never established, resulting in a plot that’s all setup and no payoff.
Art and Visuals
Luciano Vecchio’s art, with colors by Rachelle Rosenberg, has its moments of warmth and charm, especially in close-ups of the main cast. Some panels pop for their brightness and fun energy. But for every striking moment, two others feel like copy-paste filler: static, emotionless faces and backgrounds that could double as stock photos for “generic festival.” The action sequence during the hospital fire tries for explosive, but the choreography is muddled and lacks any actual danger. Visual transitions between dream horror and party daytime are never more than surface deep.
Characters
The script pays lip service to everyone on the cover but never lets any single X-Man, not even Rogue or Gambit, grow or change. Nightcrawler offers platitudes as he he explores a potential love connection with the Fest’s organizer, MacKenzie, Jubilee is comic relief wallpaper, and Wolverine barely growls. The real letdown is the Outliers—a group supposedly central to this arc, who are barely referenced except to serve a generic emotional cue or to stand in the background looking worried. No one new gets a spotlight moment, motivation, or voice. It’s as if the cast were ordered off the kids’ menu: familiar, underseasoned, and forgettable.
Positives
If there’s one thing that works, it’s that the book looks inviting from a distance. The party scenes have visual energy and the New Orleans setting is a breath of fresh air versus the usual mansion crawl. Simmering themes of mutant acceptance are nice in theory, and the idea of a community festival feels like a refresh after years of gloom and doom.
Negatives
This story’s biggest flaw is its lack of focus. Instead of using the Outliers’ trauma or the festival’s tensions to drive the narrative forward, the comic wastes energy on shallow crowd scenes and repetitive “are we safe?” musings. The plot is basically a waiting room, with the hospital burn-in tossed in as an afterthought to inject faux jeopardy, before yanking the characters back into feel-good territory with no resolution. Most criminal is how little effort is made to make the new mutants anything but cut-and-paste extras, robbing the story of growth, relatability, or suspense.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Uncanny X-Men #18 is proof that pretty settings and recycled themes are not enough to keep this franchise fresh. When the Outliers are scenery and meaningful stakes are nowhere to be found, the only thing “mutant” about this book is the way it manages to avoid any character evolution.
4.5/10
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