Exiles continues to work its way through the accumulated Judd Winick scripts.  Of course, we now know that he isn't coming back at the end of the year as Marvel had originally hoped, so the question is who ends up with the book next.  Frankly, my money's on Chuck Austen.

Anyway, this is the second part of "Fantastic Voyage", in which the Exiles turn up at the Fantastic Four's origin story and have to calm down the Thing.  And that's basically the premise.  As I said last time, it's not a great story; it reads distinctly like Winick just wanted to do something with this area of Marvel continuity and shoved the Exiles into it on that basis alone.  It doesn't help when Winick suddenly yanks the Brood into the plot, even though they have no connection with the FF at all.  Sometimes I suspect this book is created by picking two previous stories with a Random Concept Generator and then structuring a plot around whatever comes up.

That's not to say that it isn't enjoyable, in a superficial kind of way.  However, there's not much to it once you look beneath the surface and the continuity references.  That said, Winick writes a perfectly good fight scene, and it's certainly got a kind of throwaway entertainment value.

Somewhat unusually for Marvel these days, we've got a fill-in artist coming on halfway through a storyline.  It's Japanese artist Mizuki Sakakibara, who I don't think I've seen doing narrative before.  If you're struggling to remember where you've heard the name, Sakakibara was the artist originally assigned to Namor.  And then kicked off the book for reasons that were never terribly clearly explained. 

There was some suggestion that the art on Namor wasn't up to scratch, but in fairness this issue looks fine.  It's not exceptional, and the final page is rather awkward, but most of the book works.  It's clean, bright, attractive superhero material, in nice bright colours - and that's what this sort of story calls for.  She's quite good when it comes to motion - her characters dive and swim rather convincingly.

As with last issue, there are some annoying glitches where the art plainly doesn't match Winick's script, but nobody's bothered changing the dialogue.  Heather still has the line "You're running around starkers!" even though the Thing has been clearly drawn wearing shorts on the preceding three pages.  I don't object to the editorial decision - there are perfectly sound reasons for doing it.  For example, Ang Lee originally wanted the film version of the Hulk to be naked.  He changed his mind when he realised that he couldn't keep the Hulk's genitalia out of shot for the entire film without it turning into an Austin Powers scene, and if they showed it then they wouldn't get the right certificate.  Similar considerations apply here, quite legitimately.  But if you're going to make that change, then change the damn dialogue!

An okay issue, readable and momentarily enjoyable, but almost instantly forgettable.

Rating: B-

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