Annuals were out of fashion back in 2001 when Exiles was launched, which is why the book has managed to make it up to issue #88 before producing its first annual.  Now, at last, it's got around to publishing one.

This is not the ideal time for Exiles to be launching side projects, though.  Because of incoming writer Chris Claremont's health problems, Tony Bedard has already been filling time in the regular title.  Now, with this Annual, he has to fill time in a special as well.  It's an unfortunate situation, and one wonders who Marvel envisaged would be doing this book when it was added to the publishing schedule.

It certainly has the look of a last-minute rush job.  The credits list four pencillers, five inkers, two colourists and even three editors (none of whom remembered to credit the letterer).  The concept is a study old standby - the Exiles meet an earlier version of the team and fight them - but the execution suggests that Bedard hasn't had much time to polish it up.

When Marvel writers want two teams to fight, and can't think of a reason why, they reach for the Grandmaster, who mutters something impenetrable about cosmic games and then leaves them to get on with it.  That's pretty much the approach taken here.  The Grandmaster has recruited a bunch of people who are very close to the founding Exiles, and, er, he wants them to have a fight because he's got a bet on it.  And that's it, really.

This sort of thing can work, at least as a throwaway story, if you use it as a framework for the characters to bounce off one another.  But we don't really get that here, or at least, Bedard doesn't seem to have any particularly exciting ideas for how these characters might interact.

And so it comes down to this: the new Exiles meet the original Exiles, and they fight.  And then, after that, they don't fight.  Finally, the story stumbles to a halt by telling us that Earth-33619 is in safe hands because the duplicate Exiles will stay there as its local superhero team.  It's all perfectly professional, but to be blunt, it reads like the work of a skilled creative team who have a deadline and a premise, and are just constructing a stock plot around it. 

It's not horrible, but Bedard can do much better than this, and the story doesn't come close to fulfilling even the limited potential of this concept.  Disappointing.

Rating: C+

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