Well, it looks like we're finally heading for some sort of thinning out of the line.  The July solicitations are out, and there's no sign of Gambit or Rogue on the list.  Which would imply that they've both been axed with issue #12.  No Excalibur either, which seems to have disappeared with House of M, though I suspect that book will come back after the crossover's finished.

And as for District X, it's turning into a title called Mutopia X for a few months.  That takes it through to the end of House of M, but after that things remain a bit unclear.  Given the sales this book's been getting, though, it's hard to imagine Marvel sticking with it indefinitely.  After all - it sells fewer copies than Rogue or Gambit.

None of these are particularly bad books - District X is generally quite good, in fact.  But with the line as hopelessly bloated as it's been lately, to be quite honest, I'll pretty much welcome the cancellation of anything.  Anything to get us the X-books back to a sensible size.  Mind you, knowing Marvel, they'll probably just replace them with yet another bunch of unwanted titles.  Foxbat: The Hidden Years.  Rob Liefeld's Recycled Adventures.

Anyway.  District X finishes off the "Underground" storyline, which in my book, hasn't been entirely successful.

The good stuff works.  The book's pulled back from making Izzy into too much of a bastard.  Instead, he's written as a basically decent guy who's completely out of his depth here and, instead of just crumbling altogether, is taking out his frustration on himself and on everyone around.  All while remaining just useful enough for Bishop to keep him around.  It's enough to keep our sympathy for the guy while he's off shacking up with Lara the, uh, illusionist instead of returning home to his wife.  (Which, by the way, is a nicely paced scene that takes proper advantage of the page turn for a change.)

On the downside... there's that bloody worm.  The character design just doesn't look as threatening as it's obviously meant to, and I just have huge trouble with the idea of three guys, one of them carrying a gun and another one being Bishop of the X-Men, struggling that badly to take down an overgrown earthworm with little stubby limbs.  Just shoot the guy, for god's sake!  To be fair, Hine choreographs the scene to try and justify why Bishop can't just do that - his useless sidekicks keep getting in the way.  But it's still a bit of a stretch to imagine this thing causing that much of a threat to Bishop. 

He's not a particularly convincing character, either.  Hine can't seem to make up his mind whether the worm is a frustrated human trapped in a distorted body, or just a borderline animal.  He has a fairly human home, but his behaviour never really reflects this, and the impression is that the character shifts back and forth depending upon the demands of the scene.  I think Hine was aiming for "retarded", which would be fair enough, but the worm's behaviour never quite seems real.

But the tree guy at the end of the issue is a nice visual, complete with the eerie closing page of insects flying into his body.  Meanwhile, the other characters insist on trying to treat a man who is plainly just a tree as if he were a normal person, although there's a certain sense that they're going through the motions.  It makes its point far more effectively than the many scenes we've had with Winston - perhaps the plot requires Winston to double as the murderous villain, so he has to do things that are genuinely unsympathetic, thereby validating the way everyone treats him.

Some interesting ideas in here, many of which work.  But not all.

Rating: B

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