Exiles #42 wraps up Jim Calafiore's two-part excursion to Nocturne's back story.  That's an area of continuity previously banished to the dismal backwaters of the two X-Men: Millennial Visions pin-up books, where Nocturne made her first appearance.

To be honest, there's not much I can add to what I already said about the first issue.  It's clear that Calafiore's worked out huge chunks of plot for this alternate reality, of the sort that we might have ended up with had the X-books continued along the lines of an above-average take on the mid-nineties.  Naturally, that's going to have more appeal to some of the fans who've been less enthused by the direction of the books over the last couple of years.

Calafiore builds the story around the confrontation between the X-Men and a rebel faction led by Cyclops.  To give him his due, Calafiore does manage to sell this as the pay-off for years of unseen plot.  The catch is that it really doesn't seem to have much to do with Nocturne.  The story seems to be envisioned as a "coming of age" piece for Nocturne, where she starts off chafing at being forced into the X-Men by her father Nightcrawler, only to come to terms with it following some prompting from Kitty Pryde.

It falls a little flat, because Kitty's pep talk literally amounts to nothing more than "Hey, you're in the X-Men - that's really cool!"  And it doesn't have much to do with the big fight back at the mansion, which seems to be there so that Calafiore can conflate all of the ideas he wanted to use from Millennial Visions.  There are too many ideas jostling for space here, and Nocturne's character arc never gets the opportunity to make much sense.

Still, Calafiore's alternate universe does come across as a fun version of the X-Men, which would probably have been more entertaining to read than some of the stuff we've been presented with in the last few years.  It's one for fans of the mid-nineties, but they'll find plenty to enjoy in it.

Rating: B

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