There are seven X-books out this week, which I venture to suggest may be too many.  Why Marvel can't spread them out more effectively, I'll never know.  Anyhow, since there's so many of the damn things, I'm just going to stick to the X-books this time round - otherwise we'd be here all night.

To start us off, we have the final issue of Agent X.  Actually, it's the second final issue of Agent X, since issue #12 was also meant to be the last issue.  But this time they mean it.

Agent X is an odd comic with an odd history.  Although it only ran for fifteen issues, it was a continuation of Deadpool, which made it to issue #69.  And since there's a new Cable & Deadpool series just around the corner, the character lives on.  Except that Agent X wasn't Deadpool after all - something that was fairly broadly hinted from the word go.  God, it gets confusing.

In any event, this marks the end for Agent X.  It also marks the end of the collaboration between Gail Simone and Udon which has been running for a couple of years now.  To be honest, I'd expected the series to end by killing Agent X off and hitting the reset button altogether.  I'm pleasantly surprised to see that it doesn't take that approach - Agent X and his supporting cast are still around as the series ends.  Not that I'm expecting to see all that much of them in the new series.

This three-issue arc was published in order to let Simone and Udon wrap up the plots and provide some closure to the series, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that that's what we get here.  It's a fight issue, in fact.  Agent X and his supporting cast fight the Black Swan, various character arcs are drawn together, the Swan is disposed of, and a suitable degree of closure is achieved.

To be honest, I'd probably have preferred to see a bit less of the fight and a bit more of the characters in the aftermath.  The fight scene is the logical climax for the story, but it's a bit limiting.  It doesn't help that in order to get Deadpool and the Black Swan to the desired endpoints, the story has to make huge use of the Swan's questionably defined powers - the disappearance of Agent X's scars is all very nice and symbolic but I have trouble seeing what it's got to do with the Swan's telepathy.

That said, the story does give us a satisfying resolution for the storylines.  Simone does work in a funny opening sequence with Agent X's dream office, and there's a suitably ridiculous coda to round things off.  Because the issue is fairly plot heavy, it doesn't really have the room for all the quirkiness I might have liked to see in the final issue.  I can see why it's following this route, though, and it's probably unavoidable in order to provide the required closure.  And the book certainly does tie everything up in a nicely satisfying way, which was the point of the exercise.

Gail Simone and Udon have produced some very entertaining work on this title and on Deadpool before it (the shrunken Rhino turned into a keyring is still fabulous).  It's a shame that it never really found an audience, because it certainly deserved better.  I'm certainly going to miss the book.

Rating: B+

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