Tagged on to the tail end of House of M, Mutopia X wraps up with a Decimation issue.

This has been an oddly structured series.  It's four issues of the regular cast in the House of M reality, basically re-enacting the same relationships that they had the first time around.  And then, with the final issue, we return to the mainstream world for a Decimation tie-in.

I'm not at all convinced that the House of M material added anything to District X, which was by design a street-level story.  It wasn't the sort of comic that was crying out for a big reality warp storyline.  More to the point, we never really got to see anyone behaving in a noticeably different way as a result of their new circumstances.  Bishop faded into the background in his role as a beat cop, which was a nice idea.  But otherwise, it was business as usual, with the characters who were successful before still being successful in the House of M, except at a higher level.  Izzy, as a human who was doing well for himself in a mutant-dominated world, should have provided plenty of interesting material, but nothing ever really came of it.

This issue, however, doubles as the finale for District X as well as Mutopia X.  It's perhaps a little unfortunate that it has to do a Decimation tie-in as well, since clearly the story would rather focus on Izzy and his family.  But, as a pay-off for Izzy's infidelity and marital strife, it holds together quite nicely.  Izzy goes off the rails in the aftermath of his daughter's death, leading to Bishop averting a suicide attempt and taking him home to his family. 

It's a little rapid to have the family get back together in such a short space of time, but then there's only one issue available to do it, so needs must.  It does, at least, provide a proper resolution to Izzy's story and a sense that the family is back on the right track.  It feels like a suitable place to leave them, and it's nice that the series managed to get to that point.

In retrospect, given Joe Quesada's stated desire to cut back on the number of mutants and get them back to a handful of people, one has to wonder why he bothered commissioning District X at all.  After all, it's a series based on precisely the opposite premise.  It's also a series that never quite seemed to fulfil its potential once it got beyond the opening storyline.  But it goes out in a satisfying way, at least.

Rating: B+

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