The two-part "Living Planet" arc concludes in Exiles #53.  We're going way beyond the usual bounds of the X-Men's mythos here, as Ego the Living Planet turns up as the villain of the day.

The book has always shown a slight tendency towards What If?'s old problems - given the chance to write something in an alternate universe, writers tend to go hugely over the top and go for the world-changing events.  If the Exiles' job is to work out kinks in the timeline, you'd think some of their stories might be on a more personal scale. 

This time, we get a story where the scale is so huge that the Exiles themselves are largely left as bystanders.  Ego wakes the Earth and tries to get it to help him against the Celestials.  But the local version of the Fantastic Four get the Earth to side with the Celestials instead, and Ego is defeated.  The Exiles' contribution to this amounts to Blink teleporting a plot device around, but it's not really their story. 

Still, aside from that, it doesn't work too badly.  Ego is a tricky character to work with, because the concept is so utterly ludicrous.  You have to go over the top to make this idea work, and (in a deadpan kind of way) that's what Bedard and Calafiore do.  There's a rather nice visual of the Earth using street lighting to open its "eyes."  It's all very silly, but in quite an endearing way.

We also get some token plot advancement near the end, as the Celestials warn the Exiles not to trust the "Timebreaker."  It looks like Bedard is following up on the hints left by Austen that the premise of the book is not all that it seems.  I'm happy enough to see that idea being followed up, because if the premise of Exiles is played straight, it becomes awfully restrictive and formulaic. 

On the other hand, it's hard to see how far Bedard can go with this line of thinking - if they tear down the premise completely, there isn't a comic any more.  But by having the Exiles start to distrust the Timebroker and kick against their instructions, it should be possible to establish a bit more direction in the book, something that's generally been lacking thus far.

Anyway, not a bad issue.  Bit formulaic, marginalises the Exiles, but still fun in a rather goofy way.

Rating: B

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