Rounding off the major X-books for the week is the debut issue X-Men: The 198.  From the look of it, this is one of those miniseries where the word X-Men is used to indicate that it's part of the line, rather than because it's actually an X-Men story.  Perhaps understandable from a marketing standpoint, but it does run the risk that people won't get what they were expecting.

The 198, nominally, are the total number of confirmed mutant survivors worldwide.  Thematically, it's meant to be a symbolic number adopted by the survivors.  In reality, it's somewhat compromised by the incoherent way Marvel have gone about this aspect of the plot.  On the one hand we've got people saying the number of mutants has been cut from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, down to 198.  On the other hand we've got other books saying that it's 90% of mutants.  You can't have it both ways.  And really, how hard is it to write a two-paragraph memo, e-mail it to everyone, and make sure everyone's on the same page?

This sort of thing really annoys me, because it's not just trivial continuity where discrepancies are understandable.  It's the frigging premise of the entire direction of the line.  Details are important in fantasy universes because it's the details that create verisimilitude and make these worlds believable.  That's at the heart of virtually every successful fantasy world.  You've got to get this stuff right, and it baffles me that Marvel can't even seem to work out a coherent line on their central concepts, let alone their foreground details.

For example, here's another one to consider.  There are 198 mutants left in the world, total, right?  So the total number of refugees in the Institute must be less than 198.  Well, the student body was supposed to be larger than that.  Which means that the Institute building obviously has halls of residence large enough to accommodate all these guys.  So why are they staying in tents in the garden?  The answer, of course, is "to make it look like a refugee camp", but that can't get over the problem that it doesn't make any bloody sense. 

This isn't nitpicking, this is just asking the blatantly obvious questions that would occur to any halfway attentive reader.  But, apparently, not to the writers and editors.  If they do have an explanation, it would be awfully nice if they'd share it with us, because the whole set-up has some fundamental credibility problems otherwise.

Anyway, this is a David Hine comic, and the main focus is on characters left over from District X.  Mutant Town has more or less gone back to normal, and Purity thugs are wandering around looking for the hapless survivors.  The lucky District X cast members marked for survival are Lorelei (the stripper with the prehensile hair) and, more to the point, the ludicrously powerful Mr M.  He does become an interesting character in this context, since he's no longer able to hide in plain sight as a mutant who just doesn't use his powers much.  This guy's crazily powerful and not entirely in touch with the real world, making him arguably the most dangerous of the remaining mutants we've seen so far.  He's gone from being a D-list character from a minor book into a reluctant major player, and this all makes perfect sense.

Since Mr M is a good halfway up the autistic spectrum, he's not an ideal lead character.  So the Toad, of all people, is brought in to play the ordinary mutant on the street.  This is a character who's been plagued by wildly inconsistent interpretations over the years, depending largely on whether the writers want to humanise him or treat him as a cartoon bad guy.  Hine is firmly in the "humanise" camp, which is the most interesting way to use him anyway.  And let's face it, if you're trying to do a series about the low-level mutants (which is the central theme here), the Toad strikes the right balance between prominence and triviality.

There are some moderately interesting concepts here, then.  But the art is okay at best - what the hell is going on with the hair in the opening pages? - and I have serious problems with the whole set-up here.  You're operating a school for hundreds of pupils!  You sent them all home a few issues back!  Give these poor bastards a bed!

Rating: B

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