Well, we now know what's involved with the X-Men Reload event, and I've got to say I'm underwhelmed.  In fact, semantically, it's doubtful whether I'm whelmed at all.

Of course, we're getting twelve issues from Joss Whedon, which is the big news here.  It has to be, because there's not a huge amount to get worked up about further down the list.  There are people you've slightly heard of working on books you probably don't read - books which might well be perfectly good, but hardly set the pulse racing.  New Mutants is getting an overhaul, seemingly designed to make it more like the original title, but I'll come to that later.  And we're getting two Claremont books and an Austen one.

Now, up to a point, I can see where they're coming from here.  Coming out of the Morrison run, you've got three options.  You can try to clone Morrison, but that's a recipe for disaster.  You can try to do something equally radical, but who's going to do it?  (Given his influences and his usual style of writing, Whedon is unlikely to be particularly radical.)  Or you can go back to the old formula.  And Claremont is arguably the best choice for that, since at least it's his formula in the first place.  Claremont is claiming Excalibur to be a core book as well, so leave aside the window dressing of twelve issues by Whedon - effectively, they're building the line around Claremont.

And yet...  for the last few years, Marvel have had four regular X-Men titles - New X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men.  Leaving aside for the moment questions of which is best, Claremont's title has consistently sold worst (and it's dropping at the moment).  Austen has consistently come in third.  Of course, third and fourth places still do pretty well - but it seems a little odd to take them as the template for relaunching the line.  With the obvious exception of X-Men, none of the books sound bad, exactly - it's just more of the same, only safer.

Marvel have had most of their success in recent years by going in the exact opposite direction and moving away from traditional superheroics.  So are they anticipating a pendulum swing back in the other direction, or have they just lost their minds?  Quite honestly, my money is on "lost their minds."

In the meantime, the message from Reload is loud and clear: Everything Old Is Old Again.

Anyway, let's leave that aside for the moment and turn to Exiles.  Marvel have finally announced a new regular writer for this title, namely Tony Bedard.  Bedard currently works at CrossGen, where he's written the well received Negation (which I've never read) and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which is flawed, but has an awful lot going for it).  It could well be decent.

For now, we've got three more fill-in issues by Chuck Austen who, in fairness, has at least tried to build a storyline into his fill-ins rather than just treading water.  He picks up on the out-of-control Weapon X team who, under Hyperion, have pretty much abandoned their mission altogether in favour of making another attempt to conquer the world.  Now, the Exiles are brought to the same world with the remit that of the two teams, half the members must die.

Well, it's a fairly shameless use of the "I can set anything at all as the objective" device, but then that's a built-in feature of the book.  Reading between the lines, my guess is that Austen is under a remit to wrap up Weapon X once and for all.  As I've said before, the basic idea of Hyperion defying orders is quite a good one; it plays with the set-up of the book, and turns it into something more than just a device to issue arbitrary missions.  But, following that logic through, it would be preferable to see it trigger some consequences over and above the Tallus doling out an arbitrary mission to sort things out.

Most of the issue, however, is the Exiles sitting around underground talking to one another.  Of course, that means it's a character-driven issue, and that's not really Austen's strong point.  In fairness, it's middling - there's a basically sound idea about Morph blaming Mimic for Sunfire's death, which is handled reasonably well.  But Blink's reintroduction to the cast is barely addressed at all.  (Aren't any of them bothered by the implication that they can be recalled at any time, even if they do succeed in getting home?  Isn't she?)

And a scene with Morph and Illyana, obviously intended to humanise Illyana to an extent, goes off the rails when Austen remembers that she's a bad girl and must of necessity be a slut.  The man really can't write women to save his life.  The big idea for Illyana is now apparently that she will do anything to fulfil the missions so that she can avoid going home to a reality where she kills her family.  It is, in that context, a little unfortunate that Austen's first Magik storyline had her killing her own brother.

Still, it's not horrible, and at least the ideas are along the right lines, even if the execution falters.  The storyline looks to be a deck clearing exercise to prepare the way for Bedard, and in that context it should do the job well enough.

Rating: B-

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