THE CREATORS: Written by Judd Winick, with art from Mike McKone and Mark McKenna.

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Four, all pencilled by Jim Calafiore, out of thirteen issues this year.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002: "A World Apart" (the one where the Skrulls have conquered the Earth); "Play Date" (the one where Morph and Mariko have a chat); "Another Rooster in the Henhouse" (the one where the Sentinels have conquered the Earth and they team up with Weapon X); "I Cover The Waterfront" (the one where they team up with Dr Doom to fight Atlanteans, and the Mimic gets grumpy); "Nocturne & Evensong" (the Nocturne solo story); "Wildlife Reserve" (the one where the western USA is overrun with lizards); "So Lame: The Exiles in Mojoverse"; and part one of "Legacy" (the one where the USA is overrun with Vi-Locks).

Ah, Exiles.  I'm kind of going off this book.

It's not really that it's become any worse, objectively speaking, than it was last year.  The characterisation is still good, the dialogue is still snappy, the art is still beautiful - whether it's regular artist Mike McKone or designated fill-in guy Jim Calafiore.

But my concern about Exiles has always been that the dimension-jumping, Quantum Leap-style formula would end up becoming formulaic.  And regrettably that's pretty much what we've seen this year - writer Judd Winick appears to be struggling to come up with strong ideas for the central gimmick.

One of the biggest flaws of Marvel's What If? series was that, given the opportunity to write alternate reality stories, writers seemed to feel compelled to push things to the limit.  Rarely did anything have an effect confined to one or two characters - more often, the answer to "What If Peter Parker Forgot To Brush His Teeth" ended up involving the destruction of North America or at the very least the death of 75% of the Avengers.

Winick seems to be falling into a similar trap.  In the course of thirteen issues this year, he's given us a world conquered by Skrulls, a world conquered by Sentinels, an America overrun by lizards, and an America overrun by copies of Warlock.  These are all really just variations on the same basic theme of "Earth overrun by nasty thingies", and between them they've accounted for around half this year's stories.  Of the others, two were "down time" issues where the nature of the alternate reality wasn't even really touched upon; and the one with Dr Doom and Namor at war served as a generic backdrop to a story about the Mimic's increasing grumpiness.  There must be other things to do with this gimmick besides having monsters turn the planet into a giant B-movie, but Winnick doesn't seem to be finding them.

A worrying trend is that the alternate realities, which are supposed to be the central premise of the book, are becoming detached from the character arcs.  Either the story focuses on the characters and the alternate reality angle is a mere backdrop, or (as seems to be the case with the Vi-Locks thus far) the angle is at the forefront and the characters are reduced to a generic role.

The notable exception to both these complaints was the Mojoverse storyline, which did have a different concept, and which did tie in with Morph's storyline.  Unfortunately, it wasn't all that good, since it had a rather weak cop-out ending.

Having said all that, Exiles still manages to be entertaining more often than not, and its character-based issues tend to be strong.  On the whole it remains a decent read, but it needs some better concepts for alternate realities if it's going to avoid stagnation.

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