We kick off this week with the end of an era for Exiles, as the "Timebreakers" storyline wraps up. 

The big question for Tony Bedard was how to satisfactorily pay off the idea of the Exiles questioning the Timebroker, and exploring the mechanics of the book's gimmick, without simply tearing down the entire concept and leaving us without a book.  That trap has more or less been avoided; the original Timebroker stands exposed as a bunch of fairly clueless aliens, Hyperion gets blamed for the more recent stories, and the Exiles assume control of their own destinies.  But since the underlying mission of fixing broken timelines hasn't been completed, at least they've got a motivation to keep doing it, and not simply to go home.

It'll probably be a more interesting set-up for the series to work with, since the original gimmick inevitably tended to be a bit more formulaic.  Now that the Exiles get to have a home base, the characters should have more of an opportunity to develop proper lives.  The prospects of visiting a character's homeworld, or just visiting worlds that seem interesting, both become properly viable as well.

So the good news is that we end up with an equally viable book and one that escapes the limits of its original gimmick without changing beyond recognition.  The downside is that the "Timebreakers" arc itself isn't particularly satisfying.  Hyperion pretty much had to be cast in this role because he's the only suitably high-powered villain associated with the team.  But that doesn't make him a very interesting character, and we end up with two other Hyperions turning up to pummel him for 22 pages.

It also makes for a very disappointing pay-off for Beak's arc.  Beak was a deliberately odd choice for the team precisely because he's so utterly useless.  The insects nonetheless insist that Beak was chosen as the character with the best prospects of averting disaster.  Now, there are two very obvious endings for that story.  One is that Beak's travels with the Exiles lead to him blossoming into a proper hero who can defeat Hyperion; the other is that Beak is so utterly pointless that Hyperion overlooks him entirely, allowing Beak to hit the vital big red button and save the day. 

I'm not saying I particularly want to see the obvious endings, mind you, but both of them are more dramatically satisfying than the one we got.  Beak really just comes up with a dazzlingly obvious solution that the insects should surely have come up with themselves - bring in a superhero who's even more powerful.  We never really get the feeling that the day was saved because of anything specific to Beak, and so the scene falls flat.

An underwhelming story, then.  But the long term health of the book is promising.

Rating: B-

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