Since there weren't any X-books out last week, this week sees the first batch of 2004.  And what better way to kick things off than with a Chuck Austen comic?  In fact, good ol' Chuck's got three books out this week alone.  So if you were one of those people who held out the vague hope that he might improve if only he stopped trying to write half the English-language comics in the world... I guess we'll never know.

In fact, this week's three stories are at the better end of Austen's output.  Admittedly, when the lower end of your output involves communion wafers, Call of Duty and "The Draco", that's not saying much.  But while there are still plenty of things to dislike about these issues, at least they're not fundamentally horrible from the ground up.  And when you're dealing with Chuck Austen, that's a great step forward.  Perhaps he's made a New Year's Resolution.

We'll start with Exiles, and the final part of "King Hyperion."  This arc features a true rarity for a Chuck Austen comic - a good idea.  It's easy to see why this one was commissioned.  The idea of Weapon X rebelling against their remit and trying to seize control of their own destiny is perfectly solid.  The big problem with this title is a tendency to degenerate into formula, and having the characters try to escape the rails is a way of avoiding that.  There is, let me stress, absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with the idea of this storyline.

Unfortunately, the execution flounders.  Austen gives Weapon X the rather arbitrary mission of "kill the surviving mutants on Earth."  There's no underlying point to that, as near as can be made out, but then there doesn't necessarily have to be.  The arbitrariness of the missions can be defended as part of the set-up.  Hyperion decides that instead of fulfilling the mission, Weapon X will stick around and conquer the world instead.  All a bit Silver Age, but so far, we're still on the right lines.

Having got this far, however, the final act just doesn't work.  What we get is a bit of a mess where Weapon X try to save the world from Magneto's evil masterplan, fail, and say "Ah, the hell with it."  Then they slaughter everyone and move on to the next world.  In other words, it's the standard device of lazy What If? writers down the ages.  Everyone dies because you can get away with that in an alternate universe, and this is somehow supposed to stand in for the complete lack of closure.

For heaven's sake, this one ought to write itself.  For example, you have Hyperion succeed in stopping Magneto's masterplan, and then get the remaining mutants on Earth to commit suicide so that he moves on to the next world.  Or have somebody else kill them so that they can get rid of Hyperion and rule instead.  Or something.  At least give the damn thing some closure.

Anyway - not a bad idea, but a pretty hopeless ending.

Rating: C

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