The X-Men brand name isn't what it used to be.  Call me an old conservative if you will, but right about now, I'd be protecting and rebuilding it.  Marvel, on the other hand, clearly still think there's some more value to be squeezed out of it.

Later in the year, we've got X-Men: Die By The Sword, a miniseries which doesn't feature the X-Men at all.  It actually stars the Exiles and Excalibur, but X-Men sounds better.  And this week, we have X-Men: Emperor Vulcan, which is similarly light on X-Men.

You'll probably remember Ed Brubaker's "Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire" storyline, which ran in Uncanny X-Men for a whole year and turned out not to have an ending.  Instead, it was a twelve-issue first act, which built to what seemed like a gigantic pitch for a New Starjammers series.  Well, this is that book.  But nobody cares about the Starjammers, so it's got an X-Men logo on the front.

To be fair, at least this features three recently-departed X-Men, and it does spin off from a major recent X-Men storyline.  I've seen much more gratuitous abuses of the X-Men name.  But when push comes to shove, it's not an X-Men book, and I don't think it's a smart move to dilute the name like that.  Not this year, when sales are soft, the direction of the line has gone hopelessly off the rails, and a lot of work is needed to repair the brand.  There are signs of that repair work being done, granted, but it's not there yet.

Anyway, let's leave the title aside and take the book for what it is - a new Starjammers miniseries.  Even though this is clearly a direct continuation from "Rise and Fall", none of the original creators are around.  Instead, we have perfectly competent art from Paco Diaz, who more or less follows the tone set by Philip Tan's work as the lead artist on the original story.  And we have Christopher Yost as writer.

I find Yost an infuriatingly inconsistent writer.  New X-Men drives me up the wall, because it has so much potential to be good, and it's usually a bit of a mess.  On the other hand, his X-23 stories have been great.  This falls somewhere in the middle.  I don't get the feeling that Yost find this material as exciting as X-23; rather, it feels like the work of an experienced professional diligently carrying out his remit to the best of his ability.  And the best of his ability is pretty good - it's all very carefully constructed and skilfully executed.  Yet there's a certain insert-knob-A-into-slot-B feel to it, as if the story is working through a checklist of points it wants to establish.

The story picks up where we left off.  Vulcan is now the Shi'ar Emperor, with Deathbird by his side.  The Starjammers, now led by Havok, are organising a rebellion to put Lilandra back on the throne.  The general from Ed Brubaker's story is there as well, but Yost seems even more baffled than Brubaker as to what purpose he's meant to serve.  Most pointless characters at least get to deliver exposition; General Ka'ardum gets to listen to it.

But Yost does bring some new elements to the story.  The slaughter of the Grey family, from Chris Claremont's Uncanny run, is reattributed from the Shi'ar Empire itself to a previously unmentioned "secret order."  This gets round the problem of why Marvel Girl would be remotely interested in helping Lilandra regain her throne when she hated the whole Shi'ar race.  Of course, that was precisely the dilemma that Brubaker intended to set up, but it never quite worked, and became downright silly once she was partnered up with a Shi'ar boyfriend.  I can't particularly blame Yost for shunting this one to the side.

More interestingly, Yost engages head-on with the one element that was singularly absent in "Rise and Fall" - what do the Shi'ar general public think about Vulcan?  The answer, of course, is that they hate him, and that he's dependent on Deathbird's support for a shred of legitimacy.  I always felt this was one of the biggest omissions from Brubaker's arc, and there's some real potential in the story that Yost seems to want to tell - Vulcan trying to hold on to the loyalty of his understandably sceptical public.  It also explains why the Starjammers are able to round up rebel ships to join them so easily.  But most importantly, it makes the Shi'ar Empire a more believable place when its public have actual opinions, instead of just remaining off panel and dutifully doing whatever the plot requires of them.

These space opera stories have never really been my favourite side of the X-Men mythos; it's all a bit of a distraction from the core themes.  But that's less of an issue in a miniseries, and the creators are carrying on the story quite efficiently.  Readers who were interested in the Vulcan plot should be happy with this one.

Rating: B

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