Exiles is still without any permanent writer announced, following the departure of Judd Winick.  Which was, um, over a year ago now.  Working through Winick's backlog and running a string of fill-in stories has delayed matters, and for the moment Chuck Austen appears to be the de facto regular writer.  But that's never been made official, so perhaps they're simply killing time until Reload comes along to shake up the line.  (By dragging it kicking and screaming into the late twentieth century, from the looks of things.)

Anyway, this issue is the first half of a Nocturne storyline written and drawn by Jim Calafiore.  Calafiore has turned up regularly as a fill-in artist on this title, but this is the first we've seen of him as a writer.  What he's produced isn't an Exiles story at all, really.  Instead, he takes us back to Nocturne's home timeline and gives us a story set there.

If this issue is anything to judge by, Calafiore appears to be a big fan of Chris Claremont.  He devotes large chunks of the issue to laying out the complex back story of Nocturne's world.  It's hard to avoid the suspicion that this isn't so much a Nocturne story, as Jim Calafiore's attempt to cram in a whole load of ideas for the X-Men.  And it certainly feels like the sort of thing the X-books would have produced around about the late eighties.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, considering the audience for this title.  Calafiore may not be the most original of writers, but many of his ideas are perfectly good Claremont-style superhero material.  If Calafiore had actually produced all of these stories, it would probably have been quite good fun.  I gather most of this material was originally created for the X-Men: Millennial Visions one-shot a few years back - which I didn't buy - and which explains Calafiore's interest in Nocturne.  Evidently he worked out rather a lot of backstory for the character, in the form of years worth of X-Men storylines.

Of course, Calafiore didn't get the opportunity to do it that way, and the result is an issue heavy on infodump.  Poor Nocturne spends so much time explaining the vast swathes of backstory that she barely gets around to having a story.  In theory, Nocturne's arc is about the pressure she feels to live up to her father, Nightcrawler.  That's a fair enough idea, but it starts to get lost in the clutter as Calafiore spends time introducing minor characters with no apparent relationship to the plot.

If you're looking for any particular insight into Nocturne, you'll probably be disappointed.  Taken as an issue of an X-Men team book from a vastly divergent Marvel Universe, however, it hangs together somewhat better.  Calafiore's clean, angular artwork always seems at home with more traditional costumed superhero stories, and while the issue may lack depth, it's still good fun.

Rating: B

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