After months away, Chris Claremont returns to New Excalibur with issue #16.  But instead of going straight back into his ongoing storylines, we're getting the two-part "Fallen Friend" first.  I'd normally question the wisdom of that - after all, the book has been diverted for months already.  But these two issues are only shipping a fortnight apart, so by today's standards, it'll make its point quickly and move on.

The concept is simply that Nocturne has a stroke.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is Claremont's way of writing about his own health issues (in a less specific way, since his own problems were cardiac-related) with Nocturne as his vehicle.

It's one of those stories where the fantasy heroes are confronted with an essentially mundane yet devastating problem from outside their normal frame of reference.  These things can actually work quite well as a way of pushing the characters out of their normal range.  The risk is that they turn into a "disease of the week" story, where characters stand around reciting interesting facts about strokes.

Claremont's take isn't exactly subtle - after all, he's called the story "Fallen Friend."  He pretty much hammers home the point.  But he does steer clear of doing an "issue" story, and instead he writes about the characters' reactions.  None of it is likely to take you by surprise, but then if you're going to do this story at all, I'm not sure it needs any remarkable twists.  In fact, the difficulty comes next issue, when Claremont is seemingly left with the options of a miracle recovery, or writing Nocturne out of the book. 

But then again, strokes (and heart attacks, and other sudden health problems) don't really work as complete stories because there's no arc.  You're walking along one day, you're taken ill, and then either you get better or you don't. The trick is to make it an element in a wider story, and I'm not sure that this two-parter is really doing that.  At the very least, that's going to make a satisfying resolution tricky.

Scot Eaton arrives on art, with a good solid action sequence and some suitably melodramatic emotion.  He doesn't have an especially distinctive visual style, but the fundamentals are all there.  And he can tell a good story, which is the most important bit in my book.  It's the right style for a writer like Claremont, who has a fairly traditional approach that fits best with a like-minded artist.

Absolutely fine for what it is, and it's obvious why Claremont would want to write about this subject right now.  I'm not sure whether the set-up allows the story to be resolved in a satisfying way, mind you, but we'll see in a fortnight.

Rating: B

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