My choice of theme continues to serve us well as X-Men: Colossus - Bloodline finishes off.  I haven't got a clue what this was supposed to achieve either.

Issue #1 seemed moderately promising, with Colossus agonising about his mental state following his period of imprisonment, and a Russian relative investigating mysterious killings.  Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but a good solid start.

Since then, the book has gone off the rails in an alarming fashion.  The premise turns out to be that the whole Rasputin family are descended from the mad monk Rasputin.  Colossus' great-grandmother Elena was apparently one of the many women he impregnated during his religious-orgies phase (which actually has some basis in historical fact).  Quite how the family end up with his surname rather than hers is a little awkward, but I'll let that slide, because it's the least of this story's problems.

Rasputin, it transpires, was a mutant.  Well, I suppose he did at least have some miracles attributed to him during his life, such as his reputed ability to control haemophilia.  But it gets better.  Upon his death, Rasputin's spirit became divided among his many descendents.  And if you kill all but one of them, Rasputin will be reincarnated in the sole survivor.  So Mr Sinister and Mikhail Rasputin are trying to kill everybody but Mikhail, thus reincarnating Rasputin for no particularly compelling reason besides plot necessity.

Right.  And this seemed like a good idea because...?

I just don't understand the point here.  We started off with a vaguely interesting idea about how Peter was dealing with his return, and the possibility that he might be mentally unstable.  But no, it's all a red herring - it's just the influence of Rasputin, the Mad Monk.  Which isn't even resolved, so we're left with the faintly absurd idea that Colossus is prone to mental health problems because of the influence of a dead man from Tsarist Russia.

I don't even begin to understand how this is supposed to make the character stronger, or more interesting, or even how it really says anything about him at all - other than to provide a dramatically boring get-out clause for his occasional mental health problems. If ever there was a story idea I had no interest in reading, this would be it.

Some awkward art by Jorge Lucas doesn't really help matters, as the poor guy finds himself drawing melodramatic figures in capes and wrestles to square them with the more atmospheric art style he'd established in the first couple of issues.  Frankly, it's a bit of a mess.

The more I think about this series, the more it baffles me.  The execution is more or less competent for the most part, despite alarming lurches of tone, but what a horrendously awful premise.  A truly bad idea if ever there was one.

Rating: D+

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