Oh goody, a Chuck Austen comic.  It's only the third week of December, but already we've got four of the damn things.  Does he ever sleep?

Okay, I'm being a little harsh.  In fact, Austen's two efforts this week aren't horrible at all.  Exiles #39 is the middle chapter of "King Hyperion", and quite honestly, it's entirely readable.  The basic idea of this storyline is that Hyperion - in his "evil Superman" role - has turned up on Weapon X, hijacked the team, and decided that rather than fulfilling their mission, he's just going to conquer the world.

The catch, from his point of view, is that he's got to keep at least one of the remaining mutants around.  Otherwise, if they die, Weapon X will have fulfilled their mission and Hyperion will be moved on to the next world.  (Prediction: part 3 will involve somebody heroically committing suicide in order to get rid of Hyperion.  Probably Kitty Pryde.)

This issue is basically an exercise in hammering home how powerful Hyperion is, and on that level it works well enough.  There's not a tremendous amount of depth here, and Hyperion is hardly what you'd call a rounded character.  In fact, he doesn't have much of a personality at all, besides "evil" - though Calafiore's art does help to sell him as inscrutable.

It's a rather shallow exercise in Hyperion being a bastard, then.  Most of the characters are two-dimensional, and there are a couple of really clunky lines of dialogue near the end.  ("This intense speed through the atmosphere is burning me!")  Still, it's got nicely dynamic art from Calafiore, and the plot holds together.  And the basic plot idea, as I've said before, is perfectly decent.

Surprisingly enough, this is actually alright.

Rating: B

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