One week.  One reviewer.  Ten X-books.  God help me.

In fairness, some of this week's titles are just running late.  Nonetheless, the absurd lopsidedness of Marvel's scheduling is really starting to piss me off.  For example, take a look at the schedule for May.  It's a four week month.  Week one: one X-book, an issue of New X-Men.  Week two: four X-books.  Week three: seven X-books.  Week four: nine X-books.

On what frigging planet does it make sense to ship one X-book in week one and nine in week four?  I have racked my brains and cannot for the life of me think of a single good reason for having a schedule so ridiculously off-balance.  What on earth is the point?  One would like to imagine that somebody actually thinks about these things rather than just drawing the schedule out of a hat, but it's difficult to see what possible thought process could lead somebody to conclude that this is in any way a sensible schedule. 

Books like Rogue and Nightcrawler are struggling badly enough as it is; dumping on the market as part of an X-deluge isn't going to help them any.  I just can't think of an explanation besides cluelessness, and believe me, I've been trying for months.  If anyone has a better idea, let me know.

Anyway.  Let's get on with the comics.  Excalibur #10 is nominally the final part of "Saturday Night Fever", although it's entirely unclear to me how this issue resolves anything, how the last three issues constitute a story arc, and what any of it has to do with the title "Saturday Night Fever."  Basically, we've got two parallel story tracks here - Callisto and Karima search the tunnels and fight the Sugar Man, while Magneto's reverting to villain mode.

The Magneto subplot is actually quite interesting, and I'm still intrigued to see where Claremont's going with it - although at this point, I'm starting to suspect that he may just be killing time until House of M, whatever the original plan was.  For what it's worth, Lopresti is now drawing Magneto in the costume from "Planet X", which is odd, since that Magneto was meant to be an impostor.  Then again, it's also the costume that Magneto was wearing in the fabulously incoherent and error-riddled Avengers #503, so maybe Lopresti is just trying to be consistent with that.  It's so difficult, these days, knowing what's meant to be a plot point and what's just badly edited.

But Magneto is certainly sliding back into a more traditional version of the character, rather than the cuddly uncle from earlier issues.  All of which tends to support the theory that Xavier has been meddling with his mind, and with him being on the other side of the island, the effects are wearing off.  So maybe that whole "impostor" nonsense was just a red herring after all.  They might yet be able to pull this off and deliver a decent explanation that squares everything. 

As for the rest of the issue, it's two forgettable supporting players against an equally forgettable villain.  It's hard to tell whether the Sugar Man is being brought into the story because of his connection with Genosha, or whether somebody's just decided that he needs to be exhumed to tie in with March's "Age of Apocalypse" event.  It's been a long time since anybody's used this character - the X-Man annual from nine years ago, to be precise - and I can't say I've been yearning for his return.  Let's put it this way, his scenes in this issue are every bit as memorable as his previous appearances.

Callisto gets all her left tentacles ripped off, and I realise that I just don't care.  Callisto (and Karima, for that matter) don't really feel like properly rounded characters.  They're Claremont stock types, who deliver Claremont homilies, and blather about the joy of being alive in the immediate aftermath of violent limb removal.  I just don't buy these characters, or identify with anything about them.  Feed them into a shredder, see if I care.

Still. Point for the Magneto subplot, which has consistently been this title's strongest feature.

Rating: B-

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