Uncanny X-Men Annual #2 - Marvel

I think that the main purpose of this book was to set up some of the story-lines or plots for this Dark Reign theme. The story bounces back and forth between the past and the present. In the past, Emma was still associated with the Hellfire Club, and was still under the thumb of Sebastian Shaw. Sebastian was trying to think about the strength of the organization and when Prince Namor shows up to one of his parties, he's enamored with him. Well, not exactly, but . . he is drooling and dying to get him to join the Hellfire Club. He wants someone of prestige and royalty and he sees all of that in Namor. Plus, he can see that Namor is definitely interested in Emma. So he tells her to do whatever in needed to convince him to join. Meanwhile, in the present Norman Osborne has put together his little band of would be world-conquerors and Emma and Namor are once again brought together out of circumstance. But I'm a little confused about the part at the end. Basically, Emma tells Namor that she has a gift to offer him. Plus, at the same time, she gets to have a little vendetta settled. She wants to give Namor Sebastian's head on a platter . . literally. So she convinces Namor that she's cut off Sebastian's head with a sword. I'm really not sure what all of this was about. Obviously she wanted to capture Sebastian to take him back to the X-Men. But . . why was Namor involved in all of this? She had to have used her mind-tricks on both of them to pull this off, but . . like I said . . I just don't see what the pay-off is. Hopefully we'll find out just what she's up to in the future installments of Dark Reign. I don't know. Anyways, this book is brought to us by Matt Fraction on scripts. Mitch Breitweiser does the art for the present sequences, and Daniel Acuna does the art for the past. When I first looked at Mitch's work I really thought it was Lee Weeks. It's really got that look and feel to it. Overall, I thought it was a decent issue. It just left me a little confused. I guess we'll just have to wait for this to unfold.