What a nice week it's been.  Marvel have confirmed that the X-books are getting a revamp in the spring (or, to put it another way, after Grant Morrison leaves).  And as the first announcement of what's coming, Chuck Austen is leaving Uncanny X-Men.  Let's be honest, whatever comes next, it can't possibly get much worse.

But don't celebrate just yet.  There is, after all, still the very real possibility that Austen might simply end up being shifted to another book.  And the leading contender for that role would have to be Exiles, where he's been providing fill-in scripts for a while now.

With Judd Winick's backlogged scripts finally exhausted, the future plans for this title are thoroughly uncertain.  Issue #38 begins a three-parter, "King Hyperion", by Chuck Austen and Jim Calafiore.  After that, we're getting a two-part story about Nocturne, written by Calafiore.  Then, in February, Austen returns for a three-part arc.  That would seem to take us through to April, which is when the big revamp is meant to be happening.  (If you're wondering what happened to supposed regular artist Clayton Henry, by the way, he's doing the Alpha Flight relaunch with Scott Lobdell.)

So it would seem, at first glance, that the future for Exiles lies with its regular fill-in writer Chuck Austen and its regular fill-in artist Jim Calafiore - who, between them, are producing the next eight issues.  However, nobody's actually announced them as new regular creative team, so they could just be filling time until the spring.

"King Hyperion" is a Weapon X story, and those usually come across as fill-in material.  Weapon X arrive on a planet where their mission is to wipe out the handful of remaining mutants.  But new member Hyperion (in his "stand-in evil Superman" mode) hasn't got the faintest interest in their mission, and decides to just conquer the planet instead.  After all, as he says, what's the point of just doing as they're told?

Let it not be said that I don't give credit where it's due.  This is a perfectly good idea for a story.  Unlike that nonsense about werewolves, it actually has some point to it.  It relates to the premise of the series.  It raises two obvious problems with the Weapon X group: what happens if they don't do as their told, and why does this bunch of psychos want to play along anyway?

Of course, there's a glitch here.  Back in issue #1, when the premise of the series was established, the consequences of non-complaince were made fairly clear.  The Exiles' home timelines had all gone wrong, resulting in the team members suffering in fairly nasty ways.  By completing their missions, they were supposed to be able to put things right; if they failed in their missions, they would go back to the fate they'd left behind.

That doesn't fit very neatly with the Weapon X characters grumbling that they don't want to go back home and spend the rest of their lives in prison.  In fact, they seem thoroughly confused about why they were ever obeying these missions.  None of this is irreconcilable - Weapon X might simply not have got the same briefing as the Exiles did, and none of the Timebroker's exposition is necessarily to be taken on faith.  Besides, even the "fixed" version of their home timelines isn't necessarily desirable.  But to be honest, with Austen's track record, I don't credit him with working this stuff through properly.

The other catch is that Austen still can't write believable characters.  Austen has always seemed to have a highly questionable attitude to women, with his female characters seemingly doomed to eternal stories about sex and their relationships with men.  With some artists, you wonder whether they've ever seen a woman; with Austen, you wonder whether he's ever spoken to one.  This issue provides a compelling example of that, with Ms Marvel reinvented as an evil slut.  And trust me when I say that the words "evil slut" imply far more dimensions to her character than she actually has.  It's the sort of thing where all you can do is roll your eyes and despair at the inanity of it all.

Still, on the plus side, the basic ideas are perfectly sound, and Jim Calafiore does his best with what's available.  Mixed, but with some genuinely good material.

Rating: B-

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