The scene turns awkward when we flashback to 2 weeks ago when we see Iron Man trying to convince Cyclops to make the X-men join the Initiative but he declines saying that the X-men have disbanded. But when we cut back to Emma and Scott, Cyclops tells her he’s thinking about how to move the X-men forward. They soon meet up with Ka-Zar and Shanna after they make out (Emma tells Scott to make out before they come because she doesn’t like the way Ka-Zar’s Elephant looks at them, and it’s true the Elephant looks pissed). We then cut to Germany where Nightcrawler and Colossus are talking about their hometowns. They soon meet up with Wolverine who has filled his need to get into a fight in a bar in every country, then they aboard a train to go to Russia. Back in the Savage Land Cyclops gets an e-mail from Angel that there’s some weird stuff going down in San Francisco, Angel then turns into a hippie.

The next issue shows Logan, Kurt, and Piotr visit Piotr’s parent’s graves in Russia and then get into a bar fight (what a surprise). Cyclops and Emma arrive in San Fran where Scott tells off some hippies and Emma learns that everyone in the city is under some sort of psychic spell. She also can’t find any of the X-men that were supposed to be in the city. Back in Moscow, a sinister looking man is talking about how he needs the X-men to visit the mysterious “Red Room”. Almost half of the next issue is devoted to the capture of Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus by Russian Sentinels. They take those X-men to the Red Room where Colossus is being interrogated about why the X-men did not lose their powers after M-day (funny, I was wondering the same thing). In San Fran Emma disguises Scott and herself as hippies and try to find the source of this strange occurrence. It turns out that a woman referred to the “Goddess” is the source of the problem. The Goddess tries to stop Emma and Scott by sending police after them but they manage to escape into an alleyway.

The next issue starts with yet another flashback to weeks ago when a couple of baby boomers in San Fran are reminiscing about the 60’s when they run into everyone’s least favorite Wyngarde daughter, Martinique who is amnesic for some reason. The couple convinces her to use her illusion powers to turn San Francisco into a replica of 1969. Meanwhile, Wolverine and the others are able to escape their cells in the Red Room (at the cost of Nightcrawler being injured) and try to escape but suddenly they run into long time X-villain Omega Red. Back in San Francisco Emma and Scott run into 4 brainwashed X-men who are trying to stop them from ruining their 60’s party. The next issue concludes the story with Cyclops fighting the brainwashed by himself as Emma stops Martinique’s illusion. San Francisco is put back to the way it was and the mayor lets the X-men know that they are welcome to set up their new base in her city. Wolverine and the other X-men defeat Omega Red easily and head home. In the epilogue a mysterious figure covered in shadows offers Martinique to be in the Sisterhood of Mutants.

My main problem with this story arc was that it was the kind of story we could have seen 15 years ago. It didn’t really add any new elements to the X-men mythos until the very end and the main villains didn’t even pose a threat to the X-men. I really hope that this change of location will also bring story changes and character changes to the X-men because as we’ve seen for the past few years the X-men have been stuck in a rut that relied too much on nostalgia from the 80’s instead of moving the X-men forward in new places. Ed Brubaker delivers solid scripts with believable (but not very memorable) dialogue. But some of the jokes fall flat and the hippie story wasn’t as fun as it could have been. This arc’s saving grace however is the art, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback deliver some really beautiful art in these issues, especially the new hippie designs. Ben Oliver fills in for some of the pages in the last issue which despite being pretty good art doesn’t really stand well next to Mike Choi’s. Overall this was a pretty average storyline that was saved by fantastic art.

Overall Grade: B