When Marvel announced that Chris Claremont was taking over Exiles, I thought it was a good match for him.  Times have changed since the 1980s, when Claremont was synonymous with the X-Men.  But he still has a solid audience, easily enough to justify Marvel continuing to publish a Chris Claremont comic or two.

Exiles seemed like an ideal vehicle for him.  Writing a book set outside the mainstream Marvel Universe, he would be free to tell whatever stories he wanted, without having to fit in with the rest of the X-Men landscape.  And thanks to parallel worlds, he could indulge his obvious interest in swashbuckling high adventure and so forth - just as he did in Excalibur's notorious "Cross-Time Caper" period.

I still think that Exiles ought to be a good match for Claremont, but his opening arc, "Enemy of the Stars", isn't a very convincing demonstration.  Understandably enough, Claremont has brought in one of his pet characters, Psylocke.  But that aside, it's a fairly standard Exiles story.  They visit a world in mortal danger, they meet different versions of familiar Marvel heroes and villains, and they do some fighting.  Everything turns out okay in the end.

It's all a bit... standard, really.  It's an Exiles story, and it doesn't do anything particularly unexpected.  Of course, it's got Claremont's typical dialogue tics.  And yet again, he's used mind control as a central plot point.  (Surely, by now, the editors should be politely suggesting that he gives the mind control a rest.) 

Otherwise, it's just an Exiles story.  Nothing wrong with it, so far as it goes.  It's got perfectly nice art from Paul Pelletier, and does the usual routine well enough, but I was hoping for something a little more distinctive.  Five issues seems a bit excessive for something relatively formulaic.

And if we're being honest, there are a few glitches in the storytelling.  The big finale involves characters talking about how almost the entire population of Earth-1720 has previously disappeared.  That rather major point wasn't properly established in the previous issues.  It's alluded to in passing at a couple of points - for example, in issue #91, the Exiles observe that New York City is deserted.  But that's a long way from setting up the complete absence of billions of people. 

Then there's Valeria Richards, who is apparently enormously important to the plot because of the jewel on her necklace - except when she was rescued from the bad guys last issue, she wasn't wearing a necklace.  (And yes, the dialogue in this issue does insist that she had it "around her neck" while she was a prisoner.)  It's completely trivial, but it makes me wonder why the Macguffin wasn't clearly signalled in last issue's script - is it a last-minute rewrite, or did it somehow slip through?

Still, on the whole, the story still hangs together.  Nonetheless, I don't feel Claremont's getting the most out of the format yet.  There's plenty of scope for him to do more with Exiles, and with any luck he'll start indulging himself and pushing the format further - although, please, not with another mind control story.

Rating: B-

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