Once again, we're getting a relatively quiet week with the second- and third-tier X-books.  Good news for me, since I'm only back in town over the weekend.  So we'll keep it relatively brief this week.

The "Underground" storyline reaches the halfway mark in District X #9.  The authorities want to invade the tunnels and stop the underground mutants from causing more trouble.  Bishop and Izzy think that would be a slaughter, so in one of those classic plot devices that never grow old, they've got three days to solve the problem themselves.

Although we've seen the underground mutants idea a thousand times before, I like David Hine's take on the concept.  The Morlocks started out as a sort of magical hidden community, which was all a bit romantic.  Then they became a by-word for insanity and slaughter for a few years.  Hine is playing it much more down-to-earth, as a group of people who really just want to be left alone but keep finding social services getting in their way.  It's a more believable version of the idea, and certainly more fitting to this book.

Thankfully, the book pulls back from Izzy's outburst of domestic violence last issue.  It's not forgotten about, but Hine is going for a slow burn here as Izzy seems increasingly out of his depth.  The incriminating visions left by the precognitive painter are a bit of a contrivance, but the creators just about pull them off.

I'm less sure about Winston Hobbes, the mutant... earthworm thing, I guess.  We're supposed to take him as a dangerously violent threat, but something about the visual doesn't really work.  With his little stubby limbs, he looks like a slightly grotesque cuddly toy.  I can't shake the feeling that he ought to be slow and easily avoided, no matter how much the story tries to assure me otherwise.

Otherwise, artist Lan Medina strikes the right balance of working the fantastic mutant elements into a broadly realistic world, and Hine fills his scripts with nice little character details.  A good issue. 

Rating: B+

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