At long last, a really quiet week.  Not only are there only two official X-books (plus an anthology title which happens to contain an X-Men story), but they're not even particularly major titles. 

Of course, there are reasons for this - largely relating to a sharp upwards swing in the number of late-running titles, on top of a schedule which was bordering on incoherent to start with.  But at least it gives me a break for once, and with at least seven X-books due out next week, I'm going to take advantage.

Excalibur #7 concludes the three-part "Food Fight."  Hands up anyone who knows why it's called "Food Fight."  No, me neither.  When I first heard the title, I'd vaguely assumed that we might get something about fighting to make sure the beleaguered population for Genosha were fed.  Which would have made sense, given the supposed premise of the title.  In fact, that's not the plot, nor does food figure into it at all.  I can't help wondering whether the title is a hangover from a completely different earlier draft, because god knows it bears little resemblance to anything in the last few issues.

The actual plot goes something like this.  Stripmine, who seems to have a deal with Unus, turns up on Genosha, apparently intending to... well, stripmine it.  As a stripmining themed supervillain, he's been waiting for years for an opportunity to engage in some stripmining-related crime, and now at last his day has come.  Stripmine captures all the heroes, but they escape.  The Dark Beast shows up for no readily apparent reason.  The heroes regroup and capture all the villains.  The end.  We round off with a coda in which Xavier and Magneto talk about founding a new state of Genosha.  That's basically the same ending as issue #4, which tells you how little progress has been made in the last three issues.

Somewhere in there, by the way, the Dark Beast seems to indicate that he actually hired Stripmine via intermediaries, and that Stripmine's job was to capture Xavier's team.  Which presumably means Stripmine wasn't actually engaged in any stripmining at all, so the entire plot boils down to "some villains attack, but they lose."

Claremont actually does a mildly entertaining version of the Dark Beast, who clearly thinks he's being charmingly charismatic when he's actually just smug.  Curiously, though, he makes no attempt to explain what the Dark Beast is actually doing, or even who he is.  As a counterpart of the Beast from an apocalyptic parallel universe, he's a character liable to cause tremendous confusion if he's just dropped in there without explanation, cumbersome as the exposition may be.  The character hasn't even been used in five years - it's not like you can fairly assume that all the readers know who he is.  Even for those of us who do know who he is, it would help to give at least some indication of what he's trying to achieve.  Mentioning that Genosha is of scientific interest doesn't quite cut it.  Given that no technology works there, you'd have thought it was the last place any mad scientist would want to be operating.

The more I read of this series, the more convinced I become that nobody really knows where it's going, least of all the writer and editor.  At this stage in the book, we should not be getting generic fights against generic villains.  This has all the hallmarks of Claremont's biggest writing flaw, one which comes up again and again - he gives his characters a perfectly interesting objective, makes it the central premise of the series, and then totally ignores it.  This is, nominally at least, a book about rebuilding Genosha.  We're seven issues in.  Make a start.  Sitting around in a villa drinking cappuccino and angsting about how awful it all is doesn't count.

Sales on this book fell 10% in October, which is not good at all at this stage.  Most Claremont books in recent years have divided the audience into those who love Claremont and those who'd prefer to see a different approach these days.  Excalibur, unfortunately, doesn't even seem to be achieving that divide - those who don't like Claremont don't like this book either, while even many of his usual fans can't work up much enthusiasm for the title.

The title just isn't working.  In theory I can see why somebody thought a series about Xavier rebuilding Genosha might be an interesting idea.  But this is not that series.  It's a series about Xavier sitting around in a villa with some ciphers and a badly written Magneto, doing nothing and waiting for villains to attack them.  There is potential in the concept, and with a rethink, the book could yet be saved.  Unfortunately, something tells me it's just going to drone on while the sales slide ever lower.

Rating: C-

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