THE CREATORS: Tony Bedard writes, while Jim Calafiore and Paul Pelletier split most of the art.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2006: The Exiles' World Tour continues, visiting the 2099 Universe, the Squadron Supreme, the Hulk's "Future Imperfect" story, and the "Heroes Reborn" Counter-Earth.  Plus: filler!

We now come to a recurring theme for 2006: "And then Chris Claremont fell ill."

As 2006 began, Tony Bedard had just begun the "World Tour" storyline, in which the dimension-hopping Exiles would visit variations on several familiar alternate earths, while chasing Proteus around.  Part nostalgia and part recruitment drive, it was apparently intended as the big climax for Bedard's run on the book.

As it turned out, "World Tour" was alright, but a touch on the long side.  Realistically, there's not much to it beyond the Exiles visiting a bunch of old cancelled titles and taking a look around.  It depends on cosy familiarity, and doesn't go much beyond that.  For those readers not familiar with the New Universe or the 2099 continuity, it must have been a bit of a drag.  God knows it started to wear on me when we got onto storylines like "Future Imperfect."  Or maybe it just went through one too many iterations and outstayed its welcome.  Either way, it wasn't altogether successful.

Even so, it would have worked as a finale for Bedard's run.  Unfortunately, the plan was for Chris Claremont to take over the book afterwards.  But Claremont's health problems have kept him out of action for months, forcing his run to be postponed into 2007, and leaving Bedard with several unexpected extra months to fill.  The operative word being "fill."

So for the last few months, Bedard has been killing time with an undeniably amusing gimmick story where the Exiles are replaced with an all-Wolverine team, and then some straightforward trots through the formula.  The book has been treading water.  Nobody can be blamed for that - it's just the way things have turned out.  But it's far from ideal.

With 2007, we get back to the scheduled story as Chris Claremont finally takes over.  In some respects, he ought to be a good fit for Exiles, since it lets him indulge his love of assorted high adventure genres, and frees him from the shackles of continuity.  If we're lucky, it could provoke some great stories from him.  If we're not, it could provoke the Cross-Time Caper, Part II.  I'm choosing to be positive.

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