Exiles #82 concludes the "World Tour" storyline, which began all the way back in issue #69 with the House of M tie-in.  That's fourteen straight issues of the Exiles chasing Proteus from world to world and, well, it hasn't quite worked.

The problem, I think, is that "World Tour" is basically a nostalgia-fest.  The thread of the Exiles chasing Proteus has really just been a device to revisit a load of old settings and wallow in the past.  In theory Proteus should be a great villain for the Exiles since he gets round the problem of how to have recurring characters in a book that changes universe every three months.  But here, the plot takes a firm second place.

And that's awkward when Tony Bedard starts trying to deliver genuine drama.  On the one hand we're supposed to go "Oh cool, it's the 2099 universe", while on the other we're supposed to mourn the apparent death of Morph when Proteus takes over his body.  And there's nothing really tying these two sides of the story together.  You could have done this same basic story with any collection of universes, and yet it's the settings that have been given prominence.

Exiles has always had a problem with being formulaic.  The original set-up of this book was essentially Quantum Leap - the Exiles arrive on a world, they're arbitrarily handed a mission, they complete it.  Giving the Exiles control of their travels should have provided a way out of that, but instead it's delivered the most formulaic year of stories in the book's history - Proteus arrives on a world, convinces the local heroes that he's a good guy, and the Exiles arrive in time to fight the guest stars while Proteus escapes. 

Obviously this final arc, visiting the ruined Heroes Reborn world, doesn't quite follow that structure because Proteus has to lose at the end.  But by this stage the story has long outstayed its welcome, since we've seen essentially the same schtick played out on several worlds already.  The nostalgia has never truly complemented the main plot, and the result is an overlong storyline which certainly has good moments in there, but falls flat as a whole.  If you don't have existing affection for these universes then there's not much else to hang onto, and it's hard to imagine that many people reading this are such devoted continuity wonks that they feel thrilled about all these various timelines.

Technically this is a perfectly adequate final issue to complete the plot.  The solution used to beat Proteus is cute and sets up several interesting storyline possibilities.  But it's just taken so long to reach this point that the story has lost my interest - besides which, the closing issues have allowed themselves to get tied up in the arcane minutiae of Counter-Earth continuity, hardly the most interesting world we've seen in this storyline.

I had high hopes for this arc, given the usual strength of Tony Bedard's work, but it's become sidetracked in playing with the toys and hasn't given enough attention to the story.  Disappointing.

Rating: C+

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