District X wraps up its first arc, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed.

Now, that's only because the book got off to a very strong start.  It raised expectations to a high level.  This isn't a bad issue.  Far from it.  But when a book starts so strongly, it's unavoidably disappointing when it drops to merely above average.

"Mr M" is an oddly structured story.  It seems to be one of those arcs which is only labelled as such in order to indicate where the break point falls for the trade paperback.  There's a lot of different plots going on in these six issues, not all of which dovetail, and those that do don't always dovetail neatly.  (There hasn't been a payoff, for example, from the fact that Mr M knows Izzy was lying about the circumstances of the shooting back in issue #1.)  It probably reads a lot better if you drop the idea that it's a six-issue storyline and just take it as the first six issues in an ongoing serial.

With the drugs angle out of the way, we're left with the gang war and Mr M himself - the wild card figure who's been getting increased attention from the police as he's continued to interfere in the other threads of the storyline.  The gang war is tied up in what seems a rather rushed way.  The police just show up, break up a major fight, and arrest everyone.

Mr M, on the other hand, tries again to do the right thing and sees it backfire yet again.  He ends up having a stab at obliterating the whole district, until our heroes calm him down.  To be honest, this doesn't entirely work.  The character has always been a bit enigmatic, and I don't really get much sense of the way he thinks.  His attitude seemed to be that since he's got so much power, he ought to do something useful with it.  It's less than obvious why he should suddenly turn round and decide to blow up the district, even in a fit of pique.  I suppose he's meant to be resigning himself to the fact that his powers only seem to do harm, and running with his destiny, but it feels a bit clumsy - at least, by the high standards the book established earlier on.  It's still a decent read, but one that falls slightly short of convincing. 

Mike Perkins and Drew Hennessy provide fill-in art (so last-minute that they're not even listed on the cover), and given the deadlines that must have been involved, it's good stuff.  It keeps well enough to the established tone of the book.

Still plenty of promise in this series, and it'll be interesting to see whether next issue starts a completely new arc, or whether the multiple dangling threads simply move forward into a new phase.  If it's the latter, and there's still more of the Mr M character to come, then things may end up making a little more sense.

Rating: B

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