Exiles moves on from its Age of Apocalypse crossover and finally gets on with the plot.

This is the story they've been building up to for a couple of years now.  The Exiles finally get fed up with the increasingly bizarre missions that they've been sent, put their collective foot down, and head off to the Timebroker's dimension to demand some explanations. 

It's a dangerous story for the book to get into, because this involves moving away from the established formula and digging into the mechanics.  And if they do tear everything down around them, it's the end of the book.  But on the other hand, as long as Bedard has a clear enough idea of where he's going after this, it's a worthwhile exercise.  One of the big problems with Exiles has always been that it's horribly formulaic.  It's Quantum Leap crossed with What If?, and desperately prone to stories where the Exiles turn up, are given an arbitrary mission, and fulfil it.  There's only a limited amount of mileage in that formula, and 62 issues in, it's about time to shake things up.

So, the Exiles make it to the citadel where everything's been run from, and we get an issue of them wandering around it so that the big reveal can be left for the cliffhanger.  For some reason, the whole place seems to be run by insects, which is an odd enough visual to keep up interest for most of the issue.  The big idea, however, turns out to be that the place has been hijacked by Hyperion.  Well, he's the biggest villain the book's seen so far, so I suppose it makes sense to re-use him in the arch-villain role.  It also means that the Exiles can get rid of him and return to some version of the established formula, perhaps with a bit more control over their activities.  So I can see this working.

On the other hand... does this actually make sense?  Wasn't the Timebroker already acting nuts when Hyperion was still on the Weapon X team?  After all, he gave them a pointlessly silly mission to kill one another.  And recruiting Hyperion at all would seem a remarkably stupid move by whoever was in charge before.  Still, there's three issues still to go here, so I'll give Bedard the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

Oh, and after skirting around the edges of the Age of Apocalypse crossover as much as humanly possible over the last two issues, Bedard celebrates his freedom from it by promptly killing off Holocaust, who was only introduced three issues ago in order to justify the crossover.  Something tells me that he wasn't desperately enthusiastic about that story.  If so, I can't blame him.

Anyhow, not a bad start to the new arc.  This is an important one for the future of the book, and it looks to be on the right track.

Rating: B+

back | continue